by J. S. Law
After spending a portion of the night checking through her investigation papers and trying to put some of them back into order, Dan had remained awake for what seemed like the rest of the night, listening to strange and sudden noises that pierced the constant drone of the air conditioning: pressurised air being vented, hydraulic actuators moving equipment, and all of this intermingled with seemingly random sailors coming in and out of the bomb-shop to complete their duties, or just to stomp around. Sleep had not come easy and she was exhausted.
They didn’t pipe ‘Call the Hands’ to rouse the sailors from their beds, as they did on the surface ships that Dan had embarked on previously, and she was awoken instead by the sound of someone moving and talking near to her. Her eyes opened quickly but they refused to operate correctly despite, or perhaps because of, the comforting bright lights. She blinked repeatedly, clearing them like a dirty windscreen, each blink revealing a little more of her surroundings. She tried to find something she recognised; something familiar that would remind her where she was. Instead she saw a young sailor walking around each of the missiles and torpedoes in turn holding what appeared to be a small handheld hoover.
Behind him, like a line of baby ducklings, other young sailors followed, watching what he did, some taking notes, as he explained the process of ‘sniffing’.
She looked at her watch: 08:32. Breakfast was long since done and she remembered that she had also missed the evening meal the night before. Her stomach ached and her mouth felt dry as she swallowed and watched the submariners across the short wall of supplies that ran forward to aft along the centreline of the bomb-shop.
The sailor, his charges in tow, approached her, standing only a foot from her bunk, and seemed only then to realise that she was awake.
He was young, thin and gangly, his face littered with pimples. He seemed to panic at the sight of her, as though he hadn’t seen her in there over previous watches when he came down to go about this same duty.
‘Sorry, ma’am,’ he said, stumbling over the words. ‘I have to come down and sniff every six hours. In case the bombs leak.’
Dan opened and closed her eyes a few times, working them to ensure they would stay open as she spoke.
‘Thank you,’ she finally said. ‘I appreciate it.’
She was sure that she did appreciate it too; the thought of sleeping alongside leaky bombs really didn’t fill her with a warm fuzzy feeling.
The boy nodded and turned away, finished his job quickly and told the others he would talk more when they were out of the compartment. He quickly headed towards the ladder.
The others exited first and he turned to nod at Dan before starting up the ladder himself.
‘Excuse me,’ asked Dan. ‘Is there a canteen on board? Anywhere I can buy something to eat? Chocolate bars would do, anything really.’
The young sailor turned back and smiled at her.
He was one of the first people to have done so in a fashion that seemed genuine, aside from Aaron, since she had boarded HMS Tenacity.
‘Sure, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Go up this ladder onto two-deck, then go forward through twenty-nine bulkhead, that’s the big door right up there.’ He pointed up through the hatch. ‘Keep going forward and climb the ladder that’s right in front of you. That’ll take you onto the forward escape platform; it’s a small compartment with all the escape gear and loads of other systems running through it. You can’t really go anywhere else if you keep going forward. Then, look behind you and you’ll see two doors side by side. The one on the right, as you look aft, is the Coxswain’s store.’
Dan nodded and smiled, thinking that if it came to the worst, she could catch the Coxswain later in the morning. ‘Thank you.’
‘No worries, ma’am. The Chief Stoker runs a little shop out of there,’ the sailor continued. ‘Cigarettes and chocolate and stuff. Just ask him and he’ll open it up for you.’
Dan’s smile faded.
‘Thank you,’ she repeated, but much more quietly and with a smile that, even by her standards, felt forced.
She waited for the youngster to disappear up the ladder and rolled out of her bed, carefully watching the sharp metal edges and jutting pipes that seemed to make every surface around her a potential hazard. Just moving around the boat felt like climbing through brambles.
The night before, she had paid particular attention to the timings of when the submarine crew had handed over the watch.
The forward submariners did a straight six hours on and then six hours off routine and the watches changed around the key mealtimes.
Dan had written it down in her notebook and decided that she would never use the heads and bathrooms in those crucial hours between twelve and two, or six and eight, when one forward watch was rising, showering and eating prior to going to work, and the other watch, after being relieved at their post by their opposite number, were doing the opposite and preparing for sleep.
She listened carefully; the submarine seemed quiet.
The Coxswain had scheduled her interviews to start just after 10:00, coinciding with Walker’s Section Officer finishing his watch on the nuclear plant. It had felt like another delay, but not one worth arguing over, and Dan had pretended to agree grudgingly, to relent to the Coxswain’s request, but in truth, she thought she might need the time to settle herself in and sort out her thoughts. She had to conduct the interviews, find out where people were and who they were with before Walker was found hanged, and during the evening of his wife’s murder. She had to find out how Tenacity’s morale was as she returned from her last patrol, how Walker’s morale was, how his marriage was. But, and this was the really tough part, Dan needed to find out why someone might want to attack, and later kill, Cheryl Walker.
First, though, she felt grotty and uncomfortable from the submarine environment. The heat seemed to cause a state of constant perspiration and the atmosphere was made from equal parts oil and stale air that permeated her skin and clothes.
She climbed the ladder up onto two-deck and took the few paces towards the senior rates’ heads, knocking and listening; it was as close to silent around her as she imagined the submarine could get. After a second’s hesitation, she stepped into the tiny compartment, turning back to place her laminated sign on the door and then closing it behind her.
There were two tiny showers on one wall, and two ‘traps’ on the other. Across from the traps were two sinks. Apparently around forty sailors shared this facility, which was only marginally more spacious than her own tiny bathroom in her two-bed terraced house in Portsmouth.
She stripped off, her eyes never leaving the door. She had not wanted to undress at all the night before and had tried to sleep almost fully clothed, but the relentless heat had forced her to partially disrobe. Now, she nervously placed her clothes on the hooks behind the door before stepping into the shower cubicle.
The cubicle was small, the shower head only just rising above her head-height and the curtain clinging to her hips and legs as she turned herself around under the stream of water. The shower was, thankfully, warm and she began to relax, closing her eyes as the water fell onto her, but still listening for any sound as she felt it flowing down her body. She was aware of the time, but the flowing water drowned out the air conditioning and it felt refreshing to wash away the grime and rid her body of the constant stench that submariners were often goaded about. When her conditioner was rinsed out, she ruffled her hair to get rid of surplus water and stepped out onto the floor. She dried herself, dressed and then set about the cubicle making sure she had left no trace of hair or mess that could be considered a lapse in communal etiquette. Gathering all her stuff together, she looked around the senior rates’ heads and decided that they were in a better condition now than when she had arrived. She turned and opened the door, immediately recoiling at the face that was waiting outside, standing directly in the centre of the doorway.
‘Jesus,’ she gasped, stepping back.
‘One minute, ma’am,’ said t
he Chief Stoker as he pushed past her and entered the heads.
He was naked except for a small towel wrapped around his waist.
Dan swallowed, stepping backwards, but turning to face him.
His torso was completely ripped, not a single ounce of fat visible across his physique. His abdomen was a perfect six pack and his whole body was rippling with lean, lithe muscles.
It was his tattoo that held Dan’s attention.
It started on his ribs and seemed to work all the way around to his back and over his shoulder. It was a sequence of hexagons, but like Chinese symbols, each one subtly different from the others, made up of six different individual lines, but all of them in synthesis; it was like no tattoo Dan had ever seen before, resembling how the first concept drawings of a man-made honeycomb might look, and it covered a large portion of his upper body.
‘Can I help you, ma’am?’
She shook herself out of her trance and looked up. ‘You could wait outside in future, please,’ she said, making herself face him while she stood her ground.
The Chief Stoker didn’t wait for her to leave. He dropped his towel, fully revealing himself to her, and smiled.
‘One minute, ma’am,’ he said again. ‘Every submariner on board only gets one minute to shower.’
Dan turned her back and walked out of the heads.
‘Twenty seconds to get wet,’ he was saying loudly as she walked away. ‘Then turn it off, soap up and you have forty seconds to rinse.’
He was still talking as she climbed down into the bomb-shop, only becoming too quiet to hear as she walked towards her bunk and began to put her things away.
All traces of the relaxation that she’d felt in the shower drained away like the water that had brought them. Leaning against the chest-height missile mounted above her bunk, she felt herself shudder. She took several deep breaths and then stood upright again. Looking over to the ladder to ensure she was alone, she turned her back to the bunk and slumped down onto her bed, wincing as her shoulder caught on a length of sharp polished steel.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ she said through gritted teeth.
She felt a surge of fury rise up from her stomach and had to clench her fists to stop herself from screaming. Only a few days remained for her to complete her investigation and she hadn’t even been able to start interviews due to the submarine’s routine. But really, the investigation was currently at the back of her mind. That the ship’s company of HMS Tenacity felt, almost to a man, that they could do as they pleased, that they were empowered to act towards her in any way they wished without fear of retribution, was at the forefront. Why hadn’t she acted? Why hadn’t she taken action after the papers were dropped when she came on board? Why hadn’t she challenged the officers over their conduct in the wardroom? Why hadn’t she immediately charged the sailor who had so obviously rubbed himself against her? And now, the Chief Stoker felt able to reveal himself without consideration for what Dan might do.
Her thoughts were interrupted.
There was some noise from above, the sound of a few sailors up and about, chatting and laughing. She couldn’t help but look in their direction, couldn’t help but wonder if they were talking, or laughing, about her. Maybe the Chief Stoker was recounting to them what had happened in the heads, what he had done and got away with.
She stood up and walked towards the ladder. She would go now and speak to the Old Man, take action to make sure that his crew understood how they should act. She imagined his face as she told him, imagined how it would look as he processed that each incident was her word against that of another. Would he smile as he assured her that there would be an investigation? Would he chuckle as he informed her that she was now involved in an investigation against members of Tenacity’s ship’s company and that, as such, she could no longer be part of an investigation involving those against whom her own complaint would be made? Would he tell her quietly that the best course of action, obvious to all from the outset, would have been to let John Granger embark and investigate, avoiding all such problems?
The signal that the Old Man would send to Fleet HQ would make uncomfortable reading.
It would be arranged for Dan to be boat-transferred off the submarine, with not a single interview completed and less than twenty-four hours after she had embarked.
She turned back towards her bed and reached beneath it to pull out the black bag of papers for her investigation. Her anger hadn’t subsided, but it had morphed into a festering determination. It was an hour until her first interview and she needed to be ready.
Chapter 17
Sunday Morning – 28th September 2014
‘Hey, ma’am.’
Dan looked up at the young sailor, then down at her list.
‘Lieutenant McCrae said he’s going to be late. He told me to come down first,’ he said, approaching her slowly. ‘I’m not supposed to be here until later on, after lunch, but he’s tied up with a snag back aft.’
The sailor shrugged and waited, as though it was a take it or leave it offer and he really couldn’t have cared which way she flopped.
‘Name?’ said Dan, trying not to sound peeved, but remembering her interaction with McCrae in the wardroom. It didn’t surprise her that he might pull something like this, a little slight, an action that said ‘I come when I decide, not when you say’.
‘Richie Brannon,’ he said, smiling now. ‘I was supposed to be at two-thirty.’
Dan scanned down the list from the Coxswain and spotted his name, making a note about the changed time.
She had tried to get a couple of folding chairs earlier in the morning to set up at the end of the bomb-shop, in the space where people worked out, but had been told in no uncertain terms that chairs were like ‘rocking horse shit’. In fact it seemed to her that there was nowhere to sit down on board the submarine unless you were at a watchkeeping position or eating your lunch. In the end, she made off with a folding stool that she found tucked under the second desk in the Coxswain’s office on three-deck and felt glad that she had.
She arranged the stool in the exercise space, facing forward so that she could perch on the edge of her bed, and readied a sign that stated ‘Interview in Progress – No Entry’ that the Coxswain had printed off for her, before she’d stolen his stool. Finally, she felt she’d made the best of a bad situation.
‘Grab a seat, Richie,’ she said, gesturing to the stool and watching him sit down.
He looked determinedly relaxed in the way that people often did when they came for an interview with the Special Investigation Branch, the way that said they were certain they’d done nothing seriously wrong, but a mixture of too many movies and a sailor’s guilty conscience meaning that they weren’t one-hundred per cent sure that they wouldn’t incriminate themselves if they said too much or looked too pensive.
Dan worked quickly through the basics, putting Richie at ease before she started to ask other questions.
‘How long have you been on board Tenacity?’ she asked.
‘Not long, ma’am. Only about three months.’
‘Did you know Chief Walker quite well?’
‘Well, we all kinda know each other, at least a bit,’ he said. ‘You know, I did some work for him once or twice. Helped him fix the aft hydraulic plant, but that’s about it.’
‘Did you socialise with him at all?’
‘Well, again, ma’am, we all kinda socialise a bit. There’s not that many of us and so when we go out, we tend to go together, or bump into each other at some point, you know?’
‘But you wouldn’t describe yourselves as friends?’
‘Not really, ma’am.’
‘Where were you on the night that Chief Walker died?’ she asked, changing her tone and watching his body language change as she did so.
‘I was, errr, at home, ma’am. East London. I flew back early from the stop off in Martinique, a few weeks before the submarine. Took some leave with my missus and kid. I only got recalled after it had happened
. Had to leave them both at my mum’s ’cos the Coxswain wanted everyone back on board quick-like.’
Dan looked at the young man in front of her, eager to please with an easily provable alibi, his involvement with Walker insignificant. Her sense that told her when something was wrong was silent as a sleeping cat.
‘Who were Chief Walker’s friends?’
He seemed to consider this. ‘He was friends with a lot of people. There’s a big group of them used to all go out together; the Coxswain and Whisky used to sort out the watch bill so that they were all off duty at the same time.’
Dan frowned. ‘Seems a little unfair?’ she asked.
‘Nah, it really isn’t. They’d do first night in, and no one wants to do that duty; everyone just wants to get off the submarine. So most people were glad of it.’
‘Who was in the group that used to do this?’
‘I don’t really know, ma’am, a load of them,’ he said; it sounded like an apology. ‘I haven’t been here long and I don’t know all of the senior rates that well yet.’
Dan smiled to put him at ease. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘You’ve been really helpful.’
He seemed to like that. Sitting up a little and leaning towards her. ‘Can I ask you a question, ma’am?’ he said. He looked conspiratorial, as though a few minutes’ conversation and a smile had made them friends.
‘That’s not really how this works,’ she said, trying not to sound harsh.
He hesitated, unsure whether to push on, and in that moment Dan considered whether talking to him, answering a question or two, might help in future interviews. It couldn’t hurt to try and improve the perceptions of her among the crew.
‘I won’t breathe a word to anyone,’ he offered.
‘A secret?’ said Dan. ‘Doesn’t it remain a secret as long as you only tell one person at a time?’
He laughed and shrugged. ‘How did you know it was Hamilton?’ he blurted, as though if he didn’t get it out there and then, he knew he wasn’t going to.
