by J. S. Law
She felt as though she was close enough to see the blurring black lines that made up the boundary of the picture and seemed to be desperately trying to contain the fading spread of the dancer’s red corset. Dan couldn’t see all of the detail, though, as it was a good five feet from the bed to where he was lying asleep on the couch.
When they had docked early that morning, and the stranger had shaken her gently, Dan had jerked away from him, almost lashing out with one hand while the other searched her face for any obstruction.
The man had stepped away, as so many people seemed to do, and the bright, natural daylight had stung her eyes as she looked past him to the land outside the boat.
Ryan Taylor was nowhere to be seen when John had stepped on board, taken her bag and offered her a lift to the Wardroom.
They’d driven together in silence, until she quietly asked him to wait while she collected some stuff from her room and then to drive her to a hotel, anywhere decent.
He’d done as she’d asked without question, fending off phone calls from Roger Blackett and barely heard orders for her to immediately attend the sickbay at HMS Drake. He’d carried her bags to reception, and then up to her room, and then, when Dan hadn’t asked him to leave, he had stayed the night, sleeping on the sofa. In the whole time, they had barely exchanged a dozen words.
Twice he’d made to speak. Twice he’d known better.
Dan had needed someone she trusted to be with her while she slept, just for a while.
The people she trusted most in her life were far away from here, unsure of what they’d done to be so quickly omitted from her life, but John had stayed without question.
He stirred, his head moving on the pillow and his shoulders flexing, making the burlesque lady dance like a fading mirage.
‘You OK?’ he asked, without rolling over.
‘How did you know I was awake?’
‘You fidget in your sleep and you’re not fidgeting now.’
He rolled over onto his back. His broad shoulders were too wide for the narrow couch and he turned again, shifting on the spot so that he faced her.
‘Will you be getting up today?’ he asked. ‘Tenacity’s being held at the buoy; she comes alongside tomorrow morning. We’ll have something from Steward Roach’s preliminary autopsy sooner than that, and we’ve to get your statement.’
He looked tired.
‘I didn’t even register that they’d taken Ben off. I didn’t see him,’ she paused. ‘His body, being moved.’
‘He was on a different boat, Danny. There were several boat transfers last night.’
Dan thought about that for a moment, trying to recollect seeing any other navigation lights on the water around her, but she couldn’t. She’d been exhausted and confused, her mind as tumultuous as the sea around her, any focus she had simply aimed at functioning until she got off Tenacity. ‘John.’ She paused again.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, rolling off the couch and sitting on the edge with his blanket pulled around his waist. ‘I’ll get going whenever you want me to.’
He stood up.
‘But you have to tell me what happened on Tenacity, all of it, and on record,’ he said. Then added, ‘No secrets.’
Dan nodded. ‘I will. And John …’ She paused, letting the silence draw out. ‘I am sorry.’
He turned to look at her, trying to look confused, but failing; he knew what she meant.
Dan turned away from him, facing the window. The curtains were only partially drawn, but they were so thin that the light was still streaming in as though they weren’t there at all. She could tell that he was still watching her, not moving, waiting.
‘I already told you,’ he began. ‘I would’ve had your back. I’d have come with you, to his house. You didn’t have to go alone.’
‘I know that now,’ she sighed. ‘I think I knew it then too. I won’t make excuses about being worried that you knew Hamilton, because I know that you’d have done the right thing. Maybe that’s why I didn’t, or couldn’t, tell you, because I was doing the wrong things to try and prove myself right.’
He was watching her closely.
‘I didn’t want to risk you being drawn into what I was doing,’ she continued. ‘If I’d been wrong, or even been discovered before I was proven right, there’d have been consequences.’
‘I thought we were friends,’ said John. ‘We take risks for each other, face consequences together; that’s what friends do.’
The words were heart-breaking, sounding like a hurt little boy’s words coming from a fully grown man’s mouth.
Dan turned to face him.
‘We were, are, well, you were.’ The words and thoughts were jumbled. ‘I think I’m just a bit of a shitty friend to have,’ she said. ‘I think that might be why I don’t really have very many of them.’
John raised an eyebrow and tipped his head, but he didn’t disagree.
‘I do currently have a vacancy for one, though,’ she offered. ‘And because I know you, I’d be prepared to let you skip formal interview and go straight to a probationary period.’
He laughed out loud; it was the first time she had heard him laugh around her in several years. It sounded good, full, genuine, and Dan actually smiled as she listened to him.
‘OK,’ John said, still grinning. ‘I’m game for the role, but I’ll need an advance on wages. I need to know what you know, what happened, all of it.’
‘OK, but I only want to tell it once. Would you call Roger and tell him I’m coming in to give a statement?’
John nodded, and picked up his phone.
Chapter 32
Friday Morning – 3rd October 2014
When John pressed the stop button on the interview recorder his hands were shaking and his mouth was set into a line as hard and straight as the dockyard wall. He didn’t look at Blackett, who was also sitting silently and examining the table.
John’s fair skin contrasted with his dark hair and hinted at his Irish descent, but Dan could see that it was his inherited Irish temper that was being tenuously kept in check.
Blackett started to speak, opened his mouth to do so, but stopped and said nothing.
‘Danny,’ said John, then stopped and fell back into silence.
‘How much proof do you have of what happened on board Tenacity?’ asked Blackett. ‘Do you have any proof? Any evidence at all?’ He paused and looked at John before continuing. ‘A lot of this is your word against someone else’s, Danny, but there’s areas where you could have gathered evidence.’ He paused and looked away again before adding, ‘We’re going to need to get you examined, Danny.’
‘Do you think I’m lying?’
‘No,’ said John.
‘Of course not,’ agreed Roger. ‘But whether I believe you or not won’t count for anything in court.’
‘Well, there isn’t any proof left, aside from the pictures I showed you and the bruising on my ribs.’
‘So it’s your word against,’ Blackett paused. ‘Whose?’
‘I don’t know, for sure.’
‘But you suspect the Chief Stoker, Chief Campbell, as having some role in all of this?’ Roger asked. ‘But not alone, with someone?’
‘Yes. That’s what I think, but I can’t prove it.’
‘Do you believe the threats made against you?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Dan, more quietly this time, watching John’s hands close into fists.
A knock at the door made all three of them turn.
A young naval policeman walked in holding a sealed envelope.
Dan spotted the security stamps on every seam. It had to be the preliminary autopsy report on Steward Roach; she had requested its immediate delivery.
‘You can’t be part of this investigation any more, Danny,’ said Blackett, looking away from her. ‘You know that. What you’ve just told us means you’ll have to sit it out, you’re a victim.’
Dan leaned over the table, slowly and deliberately, moving
her face closer to his. ‘Fuck. Off,’ she said, and then sat back, waiting.
He was shaking his head again before he tossed the report onto the table and stood up. ‘John, I need a team up to search Lieutenant Lewis’s cabin immediately and to pick up the length of air-hose. It’ll need to go straight to the lab, along with the note and the dolphins. Then get on to Branok Cornish and tell him what’s happened.’
He stopped to look at Dan.
‘Branok will want your blood for this,’ he said. He turned back to John. ‘If we’re lucky they might still be able to get footage from the post office the package was sent from. We’ll also need to reinterview Lieutenant Gemma Rockwell. Have her brought in and let Branok know you’re doing it; he’ll likely want to have someone sit in.’ Roger turned back to Dan. ‘If there’s anything else, Danny, now’s definitely the time.’
‘There’s nothing,’ she said, glad that her security box was back in her car, somewhere they were unlikely to look.
She reached for the report, opened it and pulled out the few thin sheets of paper. The initial presentation was standard stuff; the body was a few days old and some evidence may have been lost, although the correct procedures were followed on board Tenacity. Dan scanned through it, not knowing what she was looking for and not expecting to find it. She knew how he’d died; she’d been there, unable to stop it.
The autopsy report contained nothing at all – nothing that she could use – and she had known that that would be the case. What could there be? He had been killed in front of twenty witnesses; what else could the report possibly have found?
She threw the papers onto the table towards John, who was still sitting motionless, looking at the table top. ‘There’s nothing there,’ she said.
‘What did you expect, Danny?’ said Roger. ‘By your own admission he died exactly as Tenacity’s investigation team said he did. You think someone deliberately let him suffocate, but an autopsy can’t reveal that.’
She stood up and walked away from the table.
‘We’ve next to no proof or provable motive for any of this, Danny. Walker’s death will shortly be ruled a suicide; I’ve seen the coroner’s report. We’ve only your word about a note from Ben Roach and, because we have no proof—’
‘They must have taken it,’ Dan protested.
Roger ignored her, continuing on. ‘Because we have no proof, we have no motive for an attack on Ben either. We have nothing at all to move forward with. In fact, the only person that we have the proof to bring any charges against in all of this, is you, Danny, for withholding evidence and interfering in the course of a criminal investigation.’ His voice trailed off at the end, his temper running out of steam and slowing to a guilty sigh.
‘I have to go,’ she said.
‘You can’t,’ said Blackett, seeming to refocus back onto her.
‘I can,’ she replied.
‘No,’ he said, his voice the one that was used to being obeyed. ‘You need to be medically examined and, Danny, if you’ve something you know, something about this investigation, then you need to tell me right now.’ He paused. ‘I can’t protect you if you don’t.’
Dan opened the door, pausing before she left. ‘And just a moment ago you were telling me that I was the victim.’
Chapter 33
Friday Evening – 3rd October 2014
The house looked different this time. Even though insufficient time had passed for decay to really set into the property, the place now looked deserted, uncared for. It wasn’t just the too long grass, or the upstairs curtains that were still open this late in the evening. It was the way the house seemed to be in mourning, like the windows were eyes, big, dark and sorrowful, and the doorway was the mouth, fixed forever in a shocked expression.
Dan pulled up and waited in her car. She wondered how to deal with her removal from the investigation, what would happen if she was found to have come here knowing she shouldn’t have.
Five minutes passed, and then ten, before she picked up her mobile and dialled.
‘Sorry,’ came the immediate reply. ‘I’m inside already. I didn’t hear you pull up.’
Dan frowned and looked at the house. There were no lights on inside.
The pathway looked dark and unwelcoming until, suddenly, it brightened and the house yawned as a light was turned on and Felicity Green pulled open the front door.
The woman’s tall silhouette beckoned to her and Dan grabbed her bag and walked down the pathway and into the house without a second’s hesitation.
‘No lights?’ she asked by way of greeting.
Felicity shook her head. Her auburn hair was tied back in a neat ponytail and it swished from side to side.
‘It’s weird, I know, but sometimes I just like to sit somewhere in complete darkness, lights off, eyes closed, and think without visual distractions. It really helps me to focus and compile all the facts, to get my mind inside what’s gone on. You should try it.’
‘Not likely,’ said Dan.
If she had been unsure about Felicity before, then the feeling that she now had at meeting the woman again, standing with her and seeing the cool intellect in her eyes, dispelled any concerns. She knew she could trust this woman and knew she would.
‘So what’s up?’ asked Felicity, the casual question seeming odd in the eerie silence.
Felicity was watching and waiting.
‘I want,’ Dan stopped, ‘need to talk to someone.’
‘You can talk to me.’
Dan nodded and her eyes flitted to the lounge door.
‘Any reason why here?’ asked Felicity, gesturing to the Walkers’ home around her.
‘Kind of,’ said Dan, moving towards the lounge. ‘Yes, but I need to talk to you first and then I’ll explain.’
They sat down on the settee, at either end of the pale three-seater.
‘I can’t tell you it in chronological order,’ began Dan. ‘It doesn’t work that way for me.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Felicity, sitting back as Dan began to speak.
She recounted her experiences on board Tenacity; she left nothing out as Felicity listened without interrupting.
‘Oh, Dan,’ said Felicity when she was finished. ‘Have you reported all of this?’
‘I made a statement today. But there’s more; I have to make you understand why I went on board Tenacity.’
‘Good luck, Dan, because I can’t think of a single reason that could get me to go onto a submarine,’ said Felicity without any trace of humour in her voice.
Dan rummaged in her backpack and fished out some files. She had dispensed with the lock box tonight and had everything she needed loose in her bag. She placed pictures of Cheryl Walker’s bruised back onto the settee between them, and then pulled out pictures of a second woman, pictures that were almost identical.
‘Look at the similarities in these two pictures,’ Dan began. ‘Not just the obvious bruising from the beating, but the way the victim was controlled, the way her hair was used and then cut, the position she must have been in when this attack took place. I think these two separate attacks were perpetrated by the same person; it’s more than just coincidence, it’s a pattern.’
Felicity’s lips were pursed tight as she looked at the pictures.
‘This woman was attacked in a car park in Portsmouth two years ago,’ said Dan, pointing to the pictures of the new victim. ‘She escaped during the attack, but I don’t think she was going to be murdered.’
Felicity examined the pictures, turning them over one after the other. ‘These aren’t police pictures,’ she remarked.
‘She was dragged from her car by a group of males who beat her and whipped her over the bonnet. One of the men …’ Dan searched for a word, ignoring Felicity’s comment as she tried to get this story out while she still had the courage, ‘inflicted these marks with the victim’s belt.’ Dan traced the welts down the woman’s ribcage. ‘Look at the shape of them, the way they were delivered.’
Felic
ity was nodding but said nothing, her eyes hard and her mouth set into a grim straight line.
‘Do you agree they could be the same attacker?’ asked Dan.
Felicity sighed. ‘Maybe. It’s certainly possible that this could be the same perpetrator that attacked Cheryl Walker. There are a number of striking similarities just by casual inspection. The brutality of the attack, the whipping from side to side of the ribcage, the hair being severed …’
Dan was leaning in towards the police psychologist, hanging on her every word.
Felicity picked up the second picture and examined it closely. ‘Who else knows this happened to you, Dan?’
Felicity’s question was like a hard slap in the face and Dan took a sharp breath. She waited, unsure of what to say. She had known that she would need to tell Felicity the truth, that the pictures were of herself, that these pictures documented a turning point in her life, that this humiliating attack had eclipsed or erased every other event and relationship that came either before or after it.
‘Only one person,’ Dan answered, her voice different, as she became the subject of the conversation, as she became the victim in her picture. ‘An old and very dear friend.’
‘And they let you keep this a secret?’ Felicity looked grave as she asked. ‘Because I would argue that if a person did that, then they aren’t much of a friend at all.’
‘He did as I asked him to do.’
Felicity drummed her fingers on the file, clearly thinking. It seemed like a long time before she spoke.
‘I don’t know what you want me to do here, Dan, I don’t understand. I want to help you, but you need to give a statement to the police and hand these pictures over as evidence. This may or may not support the theory that this attacker has committed previous crimes, but having this information could have helped, and not having it may well have hindered the investigation.’
Dan shook her head. ‘I can’t do that. Not yet.’
‘Well, if you won’t help yourself, Dan, then I can’t help you either.’
