by J. S. Law
She thought of the marks on Cheryl Walker’s back and then the matching ones that had been left on her own back in an attack that had taken place one year, to the day, after Chris Hamilton was sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment. Dan’s assault had been a punishment, a warning and a humiliation in one.
It had been designed to make her feel powerless and vulnerable, to break her confidence and suppress her will, and it was most certainly not carried out by the imprisoned Hamilton.
Her mind again began to refocus on the events of that night – the knowledge that they must have been waiting for her, watching her, patiently standing by for when the opportunity presented itself.
‘Not now,’ she whispered, driving those thoughts to the back of her mind.
She picked up her pad again and began to scribble.
‘Hey.’
Dan recoiled from the word, feeling her eyes widen as she looked around quickly to see who was there.
‘Dan, you OK?’ asked Aaron. ‘Why are you sitting behind there?’
She collected her papers, closed her notepad quickly and tried to hide what she had been doing.
‘Jesus,’ said Aaron.
He began to climb towards her, stepping over pipes and equipment like a sure-footed goat in its natural environment. ‘Dan, what’s the matter? You look awful.’
As he approached, Dan leaned backwards, away from him. She cursed under her breath, hating her own reaction and at the same time pushing her papers further away from his line of sight.
He knelt before her, reached out to place his hand on hers, but she whipped her arm away.
‘Dan, tell me what’s wrong.’
She looked away, too embarrassed to make eye contact.
‘Tell me what’s happened,’ he said, more urgently.
‘I’m just,’ Dan started. Her words broke. ‘I’m just exhausted.’
‘Jesus. You look like shit and we’ve treated you appallingly,’ he said, not making eye contact and nodding at his own realisation. ‘I spoke to the Old Man again last night. We sat in his cabin for hours, most of the night, and really had it out. It’s fucking shameful and he knows it.’ Aaron was shaking his head now. ‘I’m ashamed of myself,’ he said. ‘I had a duty to step up a long time ago. I’m sorry, Dan, I’m sorry I didn’t support you.’
Dan heard the words and tried to think of somewhere else, somewhere where meeting Aaron would be a positive experience, where she wouldn’t want to writhe and slither away from him.
He looked at her and their eyes seemed to catch, locking together. Then he leaned in towards her, his face moving close, his hand reaching for her cheek and his eyes fixed on hers.
‘I can’t,’ she said, turning her face away.
He seemed to come out of a trance. ‘Of course, I—’
‘It’s fine,’ said Dan, leaning back against the wall again and sorting her pillow out beneath her. She looked at his face and saw him reddening around the neck.
‘Dan, I’m so sorry, I just,’ he paused. ‘There’s no excuse.’
She held up a hand to stop him.
‘I just can’t,’ she said again. ‘Not here, not now, but not never.’ Her voice sounded normal to her again, recovered, if a little cold.
‘Of course,’ he said, showing his teeth in a silly grin. ‘That was awkward,’ he said, flashing a hopeful smile.
Dan laughed. It sounded, to her, as fake as it was, but she could see that it made Aaron feel better and he leaned back against some of the bags and tried to look relaxed.
‘So what’s up? You do look awful, and the Coxswain said you called him and cancelled all of your interviews today. He said you’ve only done about a quarter of the ship’s company, although there’s been a lot going on to hold you back, I guess.’
‘I’m just going through some of my notes. Background stuff, really, it’ll take me a few hours, but needs to be done.’
‘Anything I can do to help?’
‘No.’ Dan tried not to make the word sound too harsh, or too urgent. ‘Not yet.’
Aaron seemed to notice her tone. He paused and looked at her, as though he was going to probe further, but didn’t. ‘I thought you might like to know that Ryan Taylor’s covering Ben Roach’s duties.’
Dan nodded.
‘He told me about your agreement with Ben. You know, the black market food trafficking? I told Ryan to keep it up. That way we can at least see to it that you don’t starve to death, although I’d much prefer you to come to the wardroom and eat a proper meal. I won’t lie, Dan, you look really unwell.’
His eyebrow was raised, questioning her.
‘You sure know how to charm the ladies,’ she replied, trying to make it sound good-humoured, maybe succeeding, but she was reaching the end of her ability to keep this going. ‘I just prefer to keep my distance. Is it OK if I just be alone for a little while?’
Aaron looked hurt, his cheeks reddening again. ‘Of course,’ he replied and stood up to leave. ‘Two more rolls here for you,’ he said, as he stepped over her holdall, ‘and we had a nutty issue, chocolate bars, so I got you one too. It’s all on your bunk.’
He turned back to face her.
‘Nutty is—’
‘I know what nutty is, Aaron,’ she said. ‘First time on a submarine, not first time in the navy.’
He made a mock scared face. ‘Well, I better go. It’s lunch in …’ he looked at his watch. ‘Now.’
She watched him walk to the ladder and climb silently up and out of the compartment.
As soon as he was gone, she rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands and leaned her head backwards against the bulkhead again.
The task was enormous and she looked at the pages and pages of notes. The certainty that there was more than one person working against her, coupled with the submarine environment where she was a clear outsider, played on her mind. She was alone, that was the message that had been sent last night, but she didn’t need to be.
Dan sat up and looked around the compartment, the alien pipes and equipment seeming to accentuate her feeling of being out of her zone, an intruder in this established space. She needed help, needed to get this boat alongside the wall, needed a search team inside No.2 AMS. She needed some support, to have Roger Blackett with her, and John Granger too, and she needed some proper sleep somewhere she knew she’d be safe.
There was only one way to get those things and that was to get a message off Tenacity. It would be a huge risk; she knew that. It also meant giving her attackers exactly what they wanted, but it was a step that needed to be taken and that she was sure would contribute to their ultimate undoing. She picked up some documents and pulled out the list of cancelled interviews. Running her finger down it until it hovered above one name.
Chapter 29
Wednesday Morning – 1st October 2014
The shouts reached her long before she heard his footsteps on the deck above her.
He was screaming her name, nothing else, no rank or title, just her surname, ‘LEWIS!’
She was, she assumed, to go up there and present herself to him, but Dan didn’t like assumptions and, instead, remained seated on her bunk steeling herself for his arrival.
‘Lewis,’ he screamed again. ‘Here, now.’ He barked the order as though he were an angry owner calling back his dog.
Raising her eyebrows and clenching her jaw, she smoothed the material of her trousers down across her thighs and continued to wait.
After a few moments she saw his boots, then his wide calves and wider waist that touched all sides of the hatch as it slithered through.
Then he was down, his boots on the deck. His face was a ruddy purple, like a fresh bruise, and his eyebrows seemed to have merged into a single dark line that rose up at each end; he looked like a snarling bull set to charge.
‘When I call you, you come,’ he seethed, spittle flying out in visible droplets as he addressed her.
Dan swallowed hard and tried to smile. ‘Sorry, sir, I didn’
t hear you call.’
A shudder passed over him, a visible rage that started low down, near to his well-padded middle, and travelled up his shirt, quivering his fat flesh as it advanced.
Dan watched its progress, seeing it travel past his shoulders, down his arms and only being prevented from leaking out of his fingers by his tightly clenched fists.
‘I know what you did.’ He let the words hang in the air.
Dan continued to watch him, observing his body as it manifested his rage.
When she said nothing, he continued, more spittle flying across the space between them as he spoke. ‘Taylor, who will now be charged for Direct Disobedience, confessed.’
‘Taylor knew nothing,’ said Dan slowly. ‘He has nothing to confess. I faked your signature and lied to him about the signal; he did nothing wrong.’
‘So you admit it.’ He was pointing at her now, his finger uncomfortably close to her bruised forehead.
‘Of course.’ Dan stood up, moving quickly around his outstretched arm, and handed him a piece of paper. ‘Here’s a statement of what I did and, of course, the reasons why I took the steps I did. I’ve been denied access to a computer and it’s handwritten. There’s only one copy, so be careful.’
The Old Man smiled. His exterior seemed to offer no buffer between his mood and the appearance that matched it. He took the paper, looked down at it and read silently. His hands were both unclenched now and his smile remained.
‘You know,’ he began, leaning back against the ladder and looking at Dan.
He licked his lips before continuing.
‘I’ve rather enjoyed having you on board. You have a drive to achieve your aims and I admire that.’ He looked around the bomb-shop and moved towards a bench seat covered in a dirty blue canvas that doubled, when the seat cover was tipped backwards, as a toolbox. Sitting down he gestured for Dan to sit opposite him.
She didn’t move.
‘What you’ve done here will end your career, Danny,’ he said softly. ‘I’m going to see to that. But I want you to know that in another time and another place, I think you would have served me well. I think we would even have been fast friends.’
He sighed and shook his head, glancing down at the letter she had given him and scanning it again.
‘What I would do to have someone like you in my brotherhood,’ he said, looking up at her again.
‘When will I be leaving?’ asked Dan, hating how close her voice was to breaking.
‘You requested immediate removal. I am expecting to surface in a few hours and to meet your boat transfer in the early hours of tomorrow morning. You may think us very callous, but we were heading back towards land so that we could get Steward Roach’s body ashore for his family. Tenacity will meet you back in Devonport two days hence.’
He stood up and walked the few paces back to the ladder. ‘Will you join me tonight for dinner in the wardroom?’ he asked, turning his head slowly towards her and locking eyes. ‘I don’t want your last memories of your time here on board Tenacity to be dark ones.’
Dan refused to look away, but didn’t speak.
He waited a few moments before he shrugged and lumbered up the ladder, like a cyclist who hadn’t forgotten what to do, but who had lost the proficiency and smoothness of motion that came with constant practice.
Dan sat back down on her bunk, looking up immediately as someone else approached.
Aaron stepped off the ladder and turned towards her with a grim smile.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘A submarine being called off operations is a Prime Ministerial level briefing. We’re supposed to be operating as part of an international task force; this is gonna cause more than ripples, Dan.’
‘This is going to cause great big waves,’ she replied.
She looked down at her hands; they were pale. One more night, she thought, just one more night and I’ll have some back-up. John and Roger will come; they won’t be able to stop themselves.
‘The Old Man’s after your blood, Dan, don’t be fooled by the pep talk. He’s been around a long time and he knows how to play this game,’ said Aaron, through pursed lips.
Chapter 30
Thursday Night – 2nd October 2014
The roar of high-pressure air being blown into the ballast tanks was deafening, drowning out all other sounds on board the submarine, but was a welcome jolt as Dan sat and waited in the bomb-shop, fighting sleep like a toddler at bedtime.
The world moved beneath her, like an elevator powering her upwards, as Tenacity was propelled to the surface.
The sound of the air stopped suddenly and Tenacity began to roll, tumbling in the choppy sea. The movement seemed worse than any of the ships Dan had been on previously in her career, the submarine’s rounded hull seeming to allow Tenacity to lean and roll at will, but each movement was a blessing for Dan as it drew her closer to departure.
No one had come to speak to her for hours, save Richie Brannon, who had been sent to brief her by the Coxswain.
Dan wondered if this was because Richie was the only member of Tenacity’s crew that he could guarantee would be civil.
Richie told her that a transfer boat from Devonport would meet her and take her the few hours back to land. He told her that it would be bitterly cold ‘on the roof’ and she should put on as many layers of clothes as she was able to fit beneath the small, hazardous duties life jacket that he handed to her.
And so she waited in silence, dressed in most of her clothes, her bag packed and ready.
‘You need to be coming up now please, ma’am,’ shouted a voice from above, the Coxswain.
She climbed the short ladder, pushing her bags ahead of her, surprised when Jago grabbed them with unexpected ease and carried them along two-deck for her.
‘Well,’ he said as he prepared to leave her at the bottom of the control room ladder, ‘I’m not sure you enjoyed your stay with us, if you don’t mind me saying so, but it was good to meet you and I wish you luck in the future.’
He held out his hand and Dan shook it.
Word had spread that they were heading home and the submarine was silent as she paused at the bottom of the two-deck ladder and looked up.
The control room was in darkness, only red lights illuminating the essential equipment. The men worked in silence, their eyes like black orbs in the burlesque glow, and everywhere shadows lurked and waited for the dim lights to force them onward to another place.
Dan would never have willingly climbed those steps, but she knew she’d pass through almost anywhere to get off Tenacity.
‘What you waiting for?’
She turned and saw McCrae standing a few yards away from her. He must have come out from the wardroom and she wondered how long he had been watching her, how long she’d been looking up and hesitating.
‘Off you pop then,’ he continued. ‘I did say, though, didn’t I? The bedroom, kitchen or off my submarine. Looks like it’ll be number three for you, for now.’ He grinned at her. ‘I should have said bedroom, kitchen or out the navy, but it looks like that last one’ll be happening now too.’
Dan swallowed, waited, made sure she was focused before she spoke so that her words wouldn’t fail her. ‘I think we’ll see each other again soon, McCrae,’ she said, sounding calm.
‘I’m sure of it,’ he replied. ‘But we should have given you more of a send-off. What’s today’s toast?’ he asked, as if thinking out loud. Then he raised an invisible glass to her, ‘A bloody whore with a sickly lesion,’ he said, bastardising the traditional Thursday toast with a grin that Dan was sure was supposed to be maniacal and intimidating, but just looked stupid.
‘It’s “A bloody war or a sickly season”,’ said Dan. ‘It means you want people to die so that you can get promotion. I can see why you’d remember that one, because I can’t think of any other reason a dickhead like you would get promoted.’
She didn’t wait for a response, nor to see his reaction, but s
imply used this exchange as the final motivation she needed to walk quickly up into the darkened control room.
No one spoke to her at all in her final moments on board. Not even Aaron was around to say goodbye as she climbed up the ladder to the main access hatch and was helped onto the casing.
Sea spray caught her face and the cold wind bit her cheeks as she waited briefly in the dark, icy night. It felt odd to be so close to the sea, only a few metres above the waves, and yet to see no hint of land in any direction.
The sailors performed their duty expertly, talking to the men on the small boat that was holding firm alongside Tenacity, and Dan was helped onto a rope ladder with thick wooden treads that was slung down over the curved side of the submarine, pinched at the bottom between the two hulls.
Firm hands grasped her as she neared the bottom and she was hauled unceremoniously onto a small fishing vessel.
There was more noise, more shouting, and then someone else appeared at the entrance. It was Ryan Taylor. He sat down across from her, not looking or speaking, the worry lines like deep waves across his forehead.
She watched as the small boat separated from Tenacity, her vision grainy with tiredness and her eyes watery with relief. After a while, she was unsure as to whether she’d watched the submarine until it had disappeared into the horizon, or whether the dark had simply taken it first. Either way, as soon as it was gone from view, with her holdall clutched tight to her chest, she lay back against a tattered bench and surrendered the fight to keep her eyes open.
Chapter 31
Friday Morning – 3rd October 2014
The first thing she saw as she opened her eyes was John’s bare shoulder in front of her.
An old and faded tattoo of a burlesque dancer looked back at her. She recalled him showing it to her one evening and telling her he’d had it done in Gibraltar when he was seventeen, only a year after he joined the navy and on his way to his first proper deployment.
