The Fear Within Read online

  Dan nodded. “Thank you.”

  He reached out and opened the door, his hands moving in slow motion as he pressed the handle down and pulled the door open.

  Dan took a deep breath, making sure she didn’t pause for more than a few seconds, and then stepped into the room to face him.

  16

  Natasha Moore—Early October (three months before disappearance)

  “Hey, Gary,” said Natasha as she entered the stores office.

  He turned round quickly, startling Natasha and making her step back.

  “Hey, Nat. Where you been?”

  Natasha looked down at her watch. She was ten minutes earlier than she needed to be.

  “Just stopped for a chat with the girls in the mess. You okay?”

  He nodded and put some papers away in his desk drawer, locking it before he looked back up.

  “What’s up?” she asked, moving across the office to her desk area.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  Natasha sat down at her desk and for a moment, staring at her screen, wished there was someone else there that she could look to, pull a face, maybe wink at, do anything to break the tension.

  The phone rang next to Gary and he snatched at it.

  “Black,” he said.

  His body language immediately changed.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, “I’ll send her up now.”

  He placed the phone back down quietly and looked across at her.

  “Ma’am wants to see you in her cabin,” he said.

  Natasha blew her jaws, stood up, and shook herself out as though she’d just finished a run. Then she walked toward the door.

  “Best I go, then,” she said.

  As she passed PO Black, he slammed a finger down hard into his keyboard and then stood up, the back of his thick arm pushing against her chest, lightly, but not moving away quickly.

  Natasha jumped and stepped away from him.

  “You okay, Gary?”

  He shook his head.

  “Apologies, it’s just this dumb machine won’t let me log on.”

  He leaned forward and hit the keyboard again in frustration.

  “I just need to get onto the system for a minute. I’ll have to call someone and get my password reset or something.”

  “I could find someone for you.”

  “It’ll be too late by then. I just want to check a few things and it’s urgent; Ma’am wants it. Don’t worry.”

  Natasha nodded and walked to the door.

  “Unless.”

  Natasha stopped.

  “Would you mind logging on to your account for me? Just for a moment. I only need to go on the system quick. I’ll log off straightaway.”

  She hesitated. She’d only recently signed the information security paperwork and sat through the IT security brief; the rules were fresh in her mind.

  “It’s okay, don’t worry,” he said, watching her and seeing her hesitate. “I don’t want you to get into any trouble, I wouldn’t tell anyone—it’d be my head on the block, too, but Ma’am Cox wants some stuff right now.”

  He smiled for the first time that morning.

  “It’s fine,” she said, and stepped forward.

  He moved aside, waving her onto his seat.

  Natasha began to type in her password and login details.

  “Just log off when you’re done and I’ll change the password later on. Then we’ll both avoid almost certain prosecution, electrocution, and possibly even execution.”

  He leaned over her as she typed, and she tensed as she felt his breath on her neck, the gentle brush of his chest against her shoulder.

  “Thank you,” he said, and waited while the computer signed her in.

  “No probs,” she said, standing up and heading for the door.

  She was around the corner and out of sight when her body shook uncontrollably, a big shiver that ran up her spine and around her shoulders.

  * * *

  COX’S OFFICE DOOR was open a crack, as seemed the norm, and Natasha knocked gently and waited to be called.

  “Come,” shouted Cox from behind the door.

  Natasha pushed the door open far enough to stick her head through.

  “It’s SA Moore, ma’am. You asked for me?”

  Cox smiled as soon as she saw Natasha.

  “Come in, Tasha. Grab a seat.”

  Natasha opened the door fully and walked to the bunk-cum-sofa.

  Cox was doing some paperwork, and was making a show of hurrying to finish.

  “So,” said Cox, turning on her chair to face Natasha. “How’s things at sea?”

  Natasha nodded. “Good, ma’am.”

  “Sarah. We’re alone, remember.”

  “Sorry. Good, Sarah.”

  Sarah Cox paused and looked at her, as though trying to figure out whether she was lying.

  “I understand there was some unpleasantness in the mess a few days ago, before we sailed, on the night of the infamous ship’s company run ashore? Bets being taken on whether you’d cheat on your fiancé?”

  Natasha tried to hide her surprise.

  “Word travels,” said Cox, but she was still smiling, and Natasha relaxed a bit.

  “It was nothing,” said Natasha. “Just some of the lads thinking they’re funny.”

  “Are you sure? Because the commanding officer’s policy on bullying and harassment is to take a hard line. So if you want me to take action, then I’ll do so. You just have to talk to me about it.”

  Natasha looked down at her hand, the small scar from the stitches she’d received still clearly visible. She was unsure how this had come to Cox’s attention and she felt embarrassed about it, but also she felt she’d dealt with it herself and done okay. She’d thrown the stupid piece of paper into the wastebasket. It was done, over, and was the least of the problems from that day.

  “Honestly, ma’am. I’m fine. It was nothing I can’t handle.”

  Cox smiled again. “Okay. But if you do find you’re getting any trouble or unwanted attention, then come and speak to me, sooner rather than later. That way, we can nip it in the bud.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  Natasha stood to leave.

  “One more thing,” said Cox. “You look tired. Are you sleeping well on board? Not doing too many workouts with our PTI?”

  The questions sounded casual, interested, but Natasha was still caught out by it. She paused for a moment, thinking.

  “I’m fine, ma’am, honestly,” she said.

  “Okay, but this is all new, so take it easy. It’d be nice to have a girl on board start and finish her time as a virgin. So, we’ll keep an eye on you.”

  Natasha stopped and her mouth dropped open.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” she said, her mouth dropping open and her cheeks flushing.

  “Don’t be, and also, Natasha, your shirt has a mark on it.”

  Natasha looked down, numb, and spotted a tiny stain on the breast pocket.

  “You need to change it. You can go and do it now. If you’re late down to stores, just tell PO Black you were talking to me. He’ll be fine with that.”

  Sarah Cox turned back to her desk and began to type on her laptop.

  Natasha waited, already doubting what she thought she’d heard, but once it was apparent that Cox wasn’t going to say anything more, she left the cabin and headed for her bunk.

  17

  Tuesday, February 3

  Dan was struck by how normal Hamilton looked, how unchanged he seemed after the years in prison. Dan wasn’t sure what she’d expected, or even hoped for. Maybe that he’d look skinny, malnourished, pale, and tired, with big dark bags under his eyes. Maybe some signs that he’d been attacked, a black eye or a new scar on his face.

  Instead he looked exactly the same as he always had.

  She saw that his hair was still short and tidy.

  It looked clean, slightly wet, as though he’d only recently showered.

&
nbsp; His blue cotton shirt was tight around his sinewy biceps, and his forearms looked as honed and powerful as ever.

  He was smiling at her, broad and warm, an old friend excited and happy to greet someone he’d missed and was delighted to see again. He made to stand up, the restraints at his wrists stopping him from rising fully, and instead he almost bowed to Dan, nodding, his shoulders hunched toward the table.

  “Danny,” he said. “It’s fantastic to see you.”

  He was gushing at her, and the sound of his voice saying friendly things, coupled with the way he looked, made Dan feel dizzy.

  She’d thought about this moment in the car on the way here, thought about all the different ways the first time might go, but she’d never considered for a second that it might be like this.

  “Take a seat, please,” he said, gesturing to the chair across the table from him, the restraints meaning that as his right hand moved forward, his left had to move back toward him and this had the effect of tipping his shoulder toward her as though he were deferring to her and submitting.

  Dan walked to the seat and sat down, watching as Hamilton did the same.

  He was still grinning like an idiot, and Dan tried to remember the days when they’d been friends.

  They’d been partners—well, he’d been the senior man, her mentor really, but they’d had lunch, grabbed a coffee, once even gone Christmas shopping in Oxford Street together when they’d had time between meetings.

  These memories came to Dan as though new, as though she’d shut them away so deeply that she was experiencing them again for the first time.

  She looked at him now and tried to think of what to call him.

  Chris had been his name before, but now everyone referred to him as Hamilton, had done so since he’d been caught and his crimes revealed. It was as though the world needed to rebrand him so it could see him for what he was. It was as though, while surnames were often used in the Armed Forces, by calling him Hamilton, it distanced them all from the person they knew. He became a thing, an object, something that people knew about but didn’t actually know.

  Sitting in front of him, though, it felt odd to call him Hamilton, the name that had come to mean so much to so many people, the name that had ended lives and destroyed families, that was a bogeyman that people read about, wrote papers about, watched documentaries about.

  Hamilton no longer felt like the name of a person she’d ever known.

  She’d always called him Chris when they’d served together, but looking at him now, knowing what he’d done, that name no longer fit.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “So, how’ve things been?” he asked, and Dan blinked at how surreal the whole situation was.

  “So-so,” she said. “And you?”

  “Well, where to start? They don’t let me out much, as you can imagine. I’m starved of decent conversation. That’s for certain. I’m allowed some access to the Internet and Twitter now, so I get the news from the lefties, but how is anyone supposed to form proper opinions from social media? When we came through training the navy prided itself on intellectual challenge, forming and defending opinions through verbal sparring, arguing and counterarguing. I don’t get any of that at all, and so, from what contact I do get with the outside world, it seems to me that we’re in an age of bite-sized news, stories being absorbed in a single sound bite. Opinions being formed from short headlines. No one thinks for themselves anymore, certainly not in here.”

  He was smiling and thoughtful, his expressions calm, but reacting as he spoke.

  “And I really don’t get to speak to many women, that’s for sure, not ones of passable intelligence, anyway. I get letters from quite a few who want to marry me, something that confuses me, I’ll be honest. We’ve talked before about how I feel about women in general, but really, marrying me? Even you must agree that’s stupid.”

  He stopped speaking and it took Dan a second to realize that he was waiting for an answer.

  “I certainly wouldn’t marry you,” said Dan, unsure what else to say.

  He looked at her, mock hurt on his face and his bottom lip curled over like a child about to cry.

  “Would you really not, Danny? Because there was a time I thought you had a little twinkle in your eye for me. I’m just saying.”

  Dan watched him, refusing to be drawn, seeing his eyes darken as the real Hamilton skulked back into view.

  “I can assure you that was never the case,” said Dan, offering him a smile of sorts.

  There was silence between them for a few moments, each watching the other.

  “You know, Danny,” he began, his voice regaining the light and welcoming tone, but his eyes failing to follow it. “I saw a huge thing on Twitter a little while ago about victim blaming. Posters saying how a significant percentage of women who are raped had consumed alcohol. The Internet was up in arms. This was blaming the victim, they said. Then someone started a hashtag thingy—no rape without rapists—and they all said how there should be no blame for the victim, and all efforts should be targeted at the perpetrator.”

  He waited, but Dan said nothing.

  “Well, I’m not allowed to interact on Twitter, just read articles and stuff, but the whole thing struck me as dumb and counterproductive; it was all working against women. You see, the posters weren’t blaming the victim, they were educating them, and what they said is true. As a rapist of some eminence, I can assure you that alcohol makes it very much easier to abduct and do harm to someone. They’re so much more trusting and pliable, so to my mind, the poster was good, no?”

  Dan watched him, expressionless, refusing to answer.

  He nodded and continued anyway.

  “I felt that that part of the argument really insulted women, implying they can’t be provided with information without feeling they’re in some way to blame, activating some kind of innate guilt complex. Then, the whole idea that we should abandon warnings and focus solely on the perpetrator is laughable, though it’s no longer polite to laugh about rape; I get that. But, say if a young man was heading out for a drink in Southampton and wanted to wear his Portsmouth football shirt, you’d warn him, wouldn’t you? You’d say, ‘Mate, if you go over there wearing that, you’ll get your head kicked in. It won’t be your fault. The fault will lie with the prick that batters you, but just take reasonable precautions.’ Wouldn’t you say that?”

  Dan shrugged and leaned back in her chair, her hands still thrust deep into her pockets, settling in for what could be a long speech.

  “I mean, how is that different from telling a woman to ‘stay with her friends’? Believe me, Danny, there’s strength in numbers. I always liked the loners. Or saying, ‘Don’t drink too much, keep your wits about you’? Is it just me, Danny? Honestly? Is there a reason I think this victim blaming is such a load of bollocks?”

  Dan sighed and looked at him, forcing herself to meet his dark eyes.

  “Because you’re a misogynistic, murdering bastard?” she offered.

  He laughed at that, belly-laughed, and the sound of it echoed around the room.

  It made Dan feel ill to hear it.

  “But who better to advise women on how to be safe than me?” he said, still chuckling. “I think I could be a simply fantastic trainer, an educator, a motivator, really. I was your mentor once, after all, and look how well you’ve done.”

  He smiled.

  “You know, Danny, they say some of the best coaches and mentors in the world, take football as an example, they can spot a child playing the game at only nine years old and tell you whether he’s likely to ever play at the professional level. Imagine that, for just a second if you will, imagine someone with my talent mentoring others.”

  He looked at her.

  “Imagine that,” said Dan.

  “I could teach you a lot. More than you might think,” he said. “But the point is really this, you can’t stop rapists by doing what’s currently being done. And you have to advise people to take care, because t
he threat is real and it’s not going to go away anytime soon. I mean, how would they have tried to target me, Danny? No one even knew I existed. How can you target a perpetrator if you don’t even know he’s out there? No, the potential victims must take action. They must take precautions.”

  Dan watched him, unsure what to do or say next.

  “You’re speechless, Danny,” he said, tilting his head as though examining her, trying to understand why that might be. “Have you no opinion on this?”

  “I do, but it’s not really what I came here to talk about.”

  “Is that because the idea of being a victim makes you uncomfortable?”

  Dan watched him, at first refusing to answer.

  “It’s never the victim’s fault,” she said, after a few moments of silence.

  He smiled and nodded.

  “I knew you’d be one of them, Danny. I just knew it. But sometimes, people, victims, do bring it upon themselves. Some of them do ask for punishment time and time again. It’s only when they eventually do so within earshot of a punisher, a predator, that they get what they think they deserve.”

  Dan rolled her eyes, looking as though she was bored listening to his tedious ramblings, but actually just needing a reason to break away from his stare. She looked around the interview room, wondering whether he was referring to the attack that she’d suffered, one year to the day after he was convicted, an attack she was sure was arranged by him.

  “Are we done with the chitchat?” she asked, looking down at her hands, realizing they were out of her pockets and in her lap.

  He tried to throw his arms in the air in mock exasperation, but the restraints stopped him, making it look like a halfhearted gesture. “Always with the getting down to business. You know, that’s why I asked that you stay for a minimum of thirty minutes, because I wanted to chew the fat awhile first, shoot the shit, put the world to rights with my old friend and nemesis, Danielle Lewis.”

  “I think I remember our relationship a bit differently than you,” said Dan, tilting her head to match his. “I always thought you were an arrogant prick, no more so than many of the other guys, to be fair, but you loved yourself, thought that everyone should listen to what you said. So I really don’t look back and see this friendship you keep talking about.”