by J. S. Law
Chapter 12
Saturday Afternoon – 27th September 2014
When Dan returned to Tenacity the Old Man was waiting at the gangway to meet her. She calmly registered with the Health Physics Sentry, withdrew some dosimetry and walked past the auxiliary machinery and bustling sailors, before stopping to salute as she crossed the gangway and stepped down onto Tenacity’s hard black casing. She saluted again as she faced him.
He was chewing gum, his jaw slowly working at it and his eyebrows responding like waves lapping against a shoreline. Silently, he stared at her for several seconds as she stood and waited.
‘So, Lieutenant Lewis, I gather you made some phone calls.’
Dan didn’t answer.
John had followed her across the gangway and was standing behind her holding his naval issue grip, a large, heavy-duty holdall that matched the black of Tenacity’s surface.
Around them, sailors were going about their business, but making little attempt to hide their interest in whatever had drawn the Old Man onto the casing this close to the submarine’s departure.
Dan placed her holdall on the deck.
‘Well, Danny.’ The Old Man said her name softly, as though he were addressing a niece that he was especially fond of. ‘I have also spoken with Fleet HQ and while it seems that I cannot completely stop the lunacy, I was able to temper it a little.’
Dan refused to react and show her confusion. She forced her face to stay neutral.
‘There is only a single available berth to sail with us today, one and only one. One of you may board and the other must stay.’
Dan felt as though she had been punched in the stomach.
‘That wasn’t my brief, sir,’ she said.
‘Well, now it is. Make whatever calls you wish, but whichever of you is sailing with us needs to be down below in five minutes. No laptops and no phones.’ He smiled. ‘I look forward to welcoming one of you on board.’
He turned away and began to climb down the ladder back into the submarine.
The hole that he was climbing into seemed even darker than it had the day before, maybe because he seemed to fill it almost completely.
Dan looked towards the access and remembered how little the light had penetrated down inside the submarine. She’d convinced herself, though she would never have voiced it, that she could climb back down inside Tenacity if John was with her. Now the idea of re-entering Tenacity alone, of climbing down into the windowless interior, seemed impossible.
‘Look, Danny,’ John whispered. ‘It’s only six days’ transit to the patrol area and there’s three days of exercises and work-up, so it’ll be manic. I’ll go. I’ve deployed on submarines loads of times. I’ll do the interviews.’
Dan was about to answer him when the Old Man’s voice cut her off.
‘Listen to your Master, Danielle,’ he said, and Dan was sure that he had knowingly phrased his words in that way. ‘If you do, at least some common sense will prevail today.’
It felt as though everyone around her was watching and waiting for what she might do, but despite them, Dan wasn’t about to go down there alone because of a barbed remark from a misogynistic prick. She looked at John. He was already squatting down and making sure his gear was ready. It seemed like everyone knew the outcome even before the decision had been made.
The Old Man was gone now, his minions maintaining a surreptitious vigil in his absence, and Dan’s mind was once again in tumult. John would, and could, do the job, of that there was no doubt, but there was another job that needed to be done, one he didn’t know about, with evidence that he didn’t know about, and one he might not complete even if he did.
As she looked at the black hole into the boat, she questioned herself again. How sure was she that Cheryl Walker’s killer dwelt within Tenacity, and how desperate was she to speak to them all and see if she could hunt him out, unmask him as she had with Hamilton? What did she actually know? The note from Walker wasn’t conclusive, far from it. The location of his suicide could mean nothing at all. The piece of hose that she had taken from Tenacity the day before could have matched the wounds on Cheryl’s back, but it was by no means a certainty and the hose was likely used on all of the submarines. Gemma Rockwell was grieving for the loss of a close friend; her feelings and memories could reasonably be clouded by that. Felicity’s hypothesis that Cheryl’s killer knew her and Stewart Walker made it likely that it was a fellow submariner, but it confirmed nothing.
Dan felt her resolve wilting.
‘Can you start clearing your gear off the casing please, ma’am, we’re readying to sail now,’ said the trot, his eyes as blank and cold as they had been a few hours before.
‘Readying to sail,’ she whispered, barely audible, only to herself. They were readying to sail less than twenty-four hours after her slip about a second death. They were moving out of her reach. All the loose strands that ran like rigging through her mind, they all seemed to lead to Tenacity, and Tenacity was sailing.
‘No,’ said Dan. ‘I’ll be embarking. Master Granger will remain behind.’
She sensed a change around her, but couldn’t put her finger on what exactly it was.
John frowned as he looked up at her from next to his bag.
She handed over her laptop and phone to him. She had known that the computer wouldn’t be allowed but had hoped to chance her hand. In preparation, and to John’s protests, she had spent much of the previous hours printing out over two hundred pages of additional investigative notes and photocopying the rest of her case files for just this eventuality.
He handed over the thick folder of case-related papers that he had been carrying and she placed it on top of her bag.
‘Put that in your bag, quick,’ he said, handing her phone back to her. ‘Everyone does it, you can’t get a signal anyway, and you’ll have some music at least. Do you have headphones?’
Dan shook her head, starting to feel numb, looking at the hatch and feeling her resolve weaken like ice under flowing water.
He knelt down and pulled some headphones out of a side pouch on his bag and handed them to her. Then he rummaged inside the bag and pulled out two packets of baby wipes that he showed to her and then forced into a side pocket of her holdall. ‘I’m worried, Danny. I don’t like this.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, and heard how hollow her own words sounded.
She had made the calls earlier with so much confidence, focused and absorbed by the knowledge that she had to achieve her aim, had to get on board Tenacity. Now that she knew she would be going alone, her growing dread and fear were joined by anger as she saw her small reflection in John’s eyes.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said again.
‘Time to clear the casing please, ma’am,’ barked the trot from behind her. ‘Either go ashore or go below.’
She turned to glare at him.
He stared back, his face a caricature of indifference.
John touched her hand.
She pulled it away – not snatching it so that other people might notice, but quickly, so that he would know it wasn’t a welcome gesture.
‘You could have trusted me, Danny,’ he said, his voice low and urgent. ‘I’d have had your back. I’d have followed you to Hamilton’s house, you know that?’
He was nodding at her as he spoke, his eyes serious as he looked at her; she knew he was telling the truth and letting something out that had been simmering for a long time.
‘I know that now, John, and I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘I’ll be waiting whenever you’re done here,’ he said, seeming to ignore her reaction.
He looked agitated.
‘What are you so worried about?’ she asked quietly, looking at the tension on his face and becoming more anxious about what the answer might be. ‘From what I can gather, the hardest part will be getting some peace down there.’
His eyes met hers.
‘Don’t be fooled, Danny. Submarines are about belonging. If you don�
�t belong, and you don’t, they can be the loneliest places on earth.’
She swallowed. It had been a very long time since she had seen him look this preoccupied.
‘I’ll be OK.’ She nodded and tucked the heavy file of paperwork under one arm, picking her holdall up in the other.
The trot stepped back, allowing her access to the ladder.
She held out her holdall to him, shaking her head at John as he moved forward to help.
The trot looked at it, but did nothing else.
‘Could you help me, please?’
He snatched the bag from her and tossed it onto the casing next to the hatch.
‘And these.’ She offered him the papers. ‘They’re quite heavy, so please be careful.’
‘You’ll have to clear the casing now please, Master,’ said the trot as he snatched the papers from Dan’s hands.
Dan looked back once more and watched John walk across the gangway and onto the jetty.
The trot took the pile of papers and looked at Dan dispassionately. ‘One down,’ he shouted. ‘Clear below, one down.’
Dan had climbed down several rungs, her head just dropping below the level of the casing, when she heard, faintly above the roar of the air conditioning and the sound of busy voices, the trot whisper to his colleague. ‘I bet it’s not the first time she’s gone down.’
Dan paused, weighed up a response, and kept on descending as the chuckling faded and the noise of the submarine filled her ears. Once at the bottom, she reached up as far as she could and the smiling trot lowered her holdall down so that, on tiptoes, she could just reach it with her fingertips. Taking the weight, Dan prepared for the trot to let go and managed to bring the bag down to her chest. As she bent down to place it on the floor she heard a loud rustling sound from directly above her. Instinctively she covered her head as her large collection of paperwork burst from the bands that were binding it and flew down from the main access hatch. The main body of the papers clung together for a moment and then separated like giant confetti as they bumped off the polished metal rungs. The majority of the papers missed her head, but, as she allowed herself to look up, she saw that the main access hatch was obscured by page after page of printed words mingling with photocopies of graphic colour photographs that were all floating down towards her.
‘Below!’ shouted the trot, the standard naval warning call when something has been dropped from an elevated position.
As the last pages fluttered to the deck, Dan looked into the long control room and could see faces spaced evenly all the way along the many panels, monitors and equipment that bordered it. On the right-hand side, as she looked, was the chart table, covered with navigational charts, pencils and Post-it notes. The three officers who had been poring over the material, now stood and looked at her, not glared, or even stared, just looked, as she stood, up to her ankles in sheets of paper and pictures of a hanged man and his brutally murdered wife.
She knelt down quickly, snatching at the pictures first and trying to sort them into a pile. They were quickly gathered and hidden away as she began to collect the other papers together, scrunching them up as she tried to order them in any way that would allow her to escape from there, to get away from the leering faces that just stood and watched her.
No one made any move to help.
She looked back up at the access hatch.
The trot was staring down at her.
Just for an instant, Dan thought that she should climb back up, catch up with John and head back to the Wardroom. Now felt like a good time to talk, to clear the air and talk about any subject he chose.
‘Barely been on board for one minute and already you’re making my submarine look untidy, Lieutenant Lewis.’
It was the Old Man. He was leaning against the frame of his cabin door and his boots were resting on some of the sheets of paper. ‘Get this mess tidied up immediately. I have a submarine to get to sea.’
He turned away quickly, his feet pivoting on the spot and ripping the pages beneath them as he stepped back into his cabin and pulled the curtain shut.
Dan looked back down and continued to gather the papers. She hated that she could feel tears starting to well in her eyes and she bit down hard, biting until her jaw ached as she tried to control her anger and frustration.
There was a loud hiss as the hydraulically operated airlock door behind her, the one that led to the Tunnel and over the top of the reactor, began to open.
Shuffling out of the way, she looked up as the Marine Engineering Officer, Aaron Coles, stepped through the metal threshold. The way the door was designed, with a rim that went all around it, meant that Aaron had to simultaneously duck his head and lift his foot up as he stepped through.
His foot hovered for a few moments, looking for a place to land, until, eventually, he had to carefully place his dirty black boot down on some of the papers. It took a few seconds for him to close the door and then he turned to her. ‘What the hell happened here?’ he asked.
‘It was an accident, I think,’ said Dan, gathering papers furiously.
Aaron looked up towards the access hatch and then back down.
‘You,’ he said, pointing to a young sailor in the control room. ‘Go and grab a gash bag and help tidy this stuff up.’
The sailor returned a few seconds later with a large black plastic bin-bag and knelt, starting to put papers into it.
‘Back to your position, Able Seaman Rose,’ said the Old Man, appearing back at his cabin door. ‘We’re getting this boat ready for sea, MEO. AB Rose isn’t a babysitter; he’s a professional, qualified submariner with a job to do.’
Aaron, also kneeling and collecting papers, looked up at the Old Man, and Dan watched as their eyes met. He took the bag from the young sailor and continued to help Dan pick up the remaining pages as AB Rose returned to his watchkeeping position.
It only took a minute, with both of them working together, before the black bin-bag was full of papers, some crumpled and creased, others dirty from the footprints of passing boots or with smears of hydraulic oil from the watertight airlock door.
The oil was red and made the pages look as though someone had washed their hands in blood and used the documents as paper towels, scrunching up pages indiscriminately.
‘I’ll take you down to your pit,’ said Aaron, reaching for Dan’s holdall and easily swinging it over his shoulder. He reached forward again to pick up the black bag of papers.
She looked at his extended hand, dirty with grease, small white scars on strong fingers, the marks of a career engineer. Dan couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at the luminous pink and yellow bracelet that peeped out from beneath the cuff of his filthy white overalls covering his watch.
‘From my daughter,’ he said, seeming to spot her hesitation. ‘It’s a friendship bracelet. I said I’d wear it for luck this trip. Me and her mum have split up, so she likes me to wear it, because it glows in the dark; every submariner’s nightmare is when all the lights go out.’
Dan nodded, and hoped that every submariner’s nightmare didn’t happen very often. ‘Thank you, but I can manage,’ she said, keeping the gash bag and also offering to take back her holdall.
He didn’t hand it over and Dan quickly followed him as he turned and walked into the control room and towards the stairs that she had taken with Steward Roach yesterday on their way to the wardroom.
‘MEO,’ barked the Old Man. ‘I need to see you in my cabin, please. Chief Stoker, show Lieutenant Lewis to her pit.’
Aaron looked back at the Old Man and nodded. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said and then turned towards Dan. ‘You’ll be all right, the chief will show you where to put your grip. I’ll come and check on you in a while and show you around.’
He held Dan’s bag out to the Chief Stoker, who had appeared from deeper within the control room.
The Chief Stoker looked at it, but, like the Upper Deck Trot, did nothing, seeming to challenge Aaron in the same way that he had faced John only a day befor
e.
Aaron’s face remained calm and still and the Chief Stoker continued to chew lazily on his gum.
‘Take this please, chief,’ said Aaron, his voice confident.
‘You don’t get bellboys on submarines, boss,’ replied the chief, but he smiled and took the bag anyway, not missing a beat on his gum. He turned and looked Dan up and down slowly, finally meeting her eyes. ‘Second thoughts, sir, it’ll be my pleasure. Anything for a lady.’
The chief stepped back and gestured for Dan to descend the inclined ladder that led out of the control room and down onto two-deck.
Dan stepped onto it, clutching the low handrail, and made to continue down.
‘Stop there please, ma’am,’ said the chief, his voice loud, carrying across the control room. ‘You should face a ladder when descending it on board a submarine.’
Dan clenched her teeth, fighting not to react, as she turned to face the ladder and continued down. She watched the chief smile at her until she reached the bottom and turned to see a sign that read ‘2-deck’.
There was a smattering of laughter from above, before the chief descended, quickly and sure-footedly, down the ladder to meet her.
As soon as he was down he handed her holdall back to her.
‘Follow me.’
Dan followed him, dragging her holdall in one hand and clutching her black bag full of paperwork in the other.
As they walked along the two-deck passageway, Dan’s bags bouncing off the walls and nearly tripping her in the narrow space, the Chief Stoker shouted out names and gestured absently with his hands.
‘Junior Rates Mess is in there; galley is in there; Senior Rates Mess is in there; you saw that yesterday as I recall. Wardroom pantry in there, that’s where you get all your dinner plated up and served to you all officer-like. Sonar space there, don’t ever go in there, you’re not cleared.’
He finally stopped a few feet away from another large hydraulic door, similar to the one that was next to the main access hatch, but this one was fully open and a metal clip held it in position.
‘This is twenty-nine watertight bulkhead. Forward of twenty-nine is predominately bunk-space. You’ll be wanting to never go through this bulkhead, ever.’
