He tested the handle. Unlocked, it turned easily under his hand and the door popped open.
Lydia remained outside.
The blinds were closed and the room dim. Brewer put on the light. The room was tidy and the bed made up and empty.
“You can come in, Miss Ellis. He’s not here.”
“He should be,” said Lydia, edging her way in. “When I saw him in sickbay I told him to come directly here and to stay in bed and rest, but it looks as if he’s never been here. His bed hasn’t been slept in.”
Brewer looked around at all Lonny’s neatly arranged possessions. “All his stuff’s still here,” he said. “Odd though. Lonny didn’t strike me as a neat freak. Quite the opposite in fact.”
He ducked his head into the bathroom. Also empty and surprisingly clean. “It’s the same in here.” He then spotted the hole in the drywall partition.
“Cripes, look at this.” He put his hand into the hole, gauging its size. “There’s some dried blood here as well.”
Lydia pushed in close to see for herself. “Oh my God, you’re right. What the hell’s been going on here?”
Brewer laid a large hand on her fine shoulder. “Ah, now, I think I have a perfectly reasonable explanation for it,” he said. “You weren’t there, but the other night after dinner, there was a bit of aggro between Lonny and Mr Reynolds. I don’t know what about exactly, but Mr Reynolds upset him, so I think this might be the result of a temper tantrum. I wouldn’t read too much into it. Better a smashed in wall than somebody’s face, eh?”
“I suppose so. But it doesn’t explain where Lonny is now,” said Lydia.
“No, it doesn’t. Why don’t you leave it with me? I’ll inform Mr Capstan of the situation and what we’ve found, and then we’ll have a look see if we can’t find Lonny. It’s not like he can have gone far is it?”
“No. I suppose not,” said Lydia. “Thank you for your help.”
“My pleasure.”
Eddie questioned the crew. No-one had seen Lonny Dick since the previous afternoon when McDougal spotted him entering his cabin, looking a little grouchy and out of sorts, an impression Euterich was keen to cultivate.
He then despatched them to make a quick search of all the obvious places Lonny might be holed up feeling sorry for himself, while he paced the main deck and examined every inch of the safety railing for a fresh scratch or scuff, for a scrap of fabric or a stain that shouldn’t be there, anything to substantiate a theory.
Feeling rough and in need of some fresh air, Lonny had made his way to the nearest open space.
Feeling sick, he leaned over the safety rail to puke. A rogue wave rose up, or a gust of wind took him, perhaps he simply overreached himself and overbalanced. Three scenarios, one result - man overboard.
He found nothing.
Disillusioned, cold, soaked by sea spray, he slumped into the tattered chair in the dog house, a general-purpose steel sided construction adjacent to the drill floor, a combination of shelter, tool shed, communications centre, coffee room and general meeting place for the driller and his crew. He dragged weary hands over his scratchy face, wiping away water running from hair plastered to his head.
He had never lost a man on his watch before.
People had lost fingers and toes, such injuries were occupational hazards, one had even lost an entire foot, sheared off at the ankle and transported to the hospital still in his boot, and there had been plenty of burns and broken bones and smacks on the head from loose chains or ropes, but no one ever died while under his supervision. In twenty years, not one fatality. He had been proud of that statistic.
Shit! Why did this assignment have to be the one on which to break his duck?
“Mr Capstan…?”
He looked up to see Lydia Ellis. He hadn’t noticed her come in and now she looked as if she were waiting for him to say something.
“Hmmmm? Sorry?”
“I said are you okay?”
He smiled weakly and brushed away a drip of water from his brow before it rolled into his eyes. “Erm, yeah, thanks.” Sigh. “Actually, no.”
“You should come inside and get dry,” she said.
“Doctor’s orders?”
“Common sense. You’re as wet as an otter’s pocket and you don’t want to get hypothermia.”
“I will in a minute.”
She perched one small buttock on the corner of the desk. “No sign?”
Eddie shook his head slowly. “No. Nothing.”
“What happens now?”
He stretched his arms over his head, arching his back until it cracked. “A missing man’s got to be reported.” He hauled himself from the chair and gave his face a final scrub with his hands. “S’pose I’d better get it over with.”
“I’ll walk with you, if you don’t mind.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I’d appreciate it.”
She kept him company as far as the entrance to the habitat, where they parted, she to find a warming cup of coffee, him to go radio the bad news back to the company headquarters.
He took a moment, staring out of the Control Room window overlooking the work area, taking deep breaths as he organised his thoughts,before he picked up the satellite telephone which would connect him directly with Longdrift Headquarters and his line manager, William Edgecombe. He related the details as he knew them and the actions the crew had already taken.
Edgecombe’s voice of authority sounded tinny, brittle, annoyed. “You’re sure he’s gone overboard? You’ve searched everywhere? Under every bed? In every broom cupboard? Every stall in the heads?”
“As best we can with just the eight of us,” said Eddie, emphasising the lack of manpower. “The guys are still at it now, but we’ve already searched high and low, twice. There’s no sign of him.”
A serious amount of cursing came back over the radio. “I’ll pass on the news to the chief, but he’s not going to like this one bit. You’d better hang onto yer arse, Eddie.” Pause. “We’ll get back to you.” Another pause before the parting shot. “What a fucking balls up.”
And he was gone. Just like that. No good-bye, no over and out, just gone, leaving Eddie hanging on the dead phone with no idea what to do next.
He settled the handset back in its cradle, closed his eyes and slumped forward, letting his forehead thunk repeatedly against the desktop, each little bounce off the Formica punctuated with a bitter, “Fuck – fuck – fuck – fuck,” until he gave himself a headache.
He folded his arms over his head and swore until the well of profanity ran dry. He’d warned them, when they first proposed this little jolly and dropped it on him that there were only to be twelve in the group, he warned them it would be a disaster in the making. No exaggeration.
When they told him two days before they left that actually there would only be nine instead, he should have told them where to get off, walked away and refused to co-operate, refused to come.
They wouldn’t have listened of course. They would simply have sent him off to play in the quiet corner and sent some other poor bugger instead.
Eddie swore again, lurched to his feet and sloped off to the mess room to find coffee, sulking every step of the way. He and this little band of reprobates had been given the unenviable task of effectively forensically scrutinising every inch of the platform section by section, from the lowest point on the sea bed 120 metres down, to the tip of the drill derrick 150 metres above sea level, four fifths the height of the Eiffel tower in all, and once ensconced on their concrete and metal island they would spend their days inspecting and testing its structural integrity, both above and below the water line, fixing faults if able, photographing and recording it for further action by others if not.
They were to inspect every item of electrical and mechanical equipment and pipework for faults, leaks and any potential deficiencies, from the mighty mud pump right down to the last light bulb and door knob. And why, because Falcon Bravo was a costly failure for Longdrift and it was their job t
o make sure it wasn’t in danger of collapsing into the sea before it could be sold.
A hundred and eighty million pounds in the commissioning, it wasn’t a particularly large platform but it started off full of promise, its main bore and five satellite wells pumping out a steady 700 to 1100 barrels a day, for six years straight.
But the reservoir did not turn out to be the bottomless pit the petrologists and geologists at first suggested. Despite the best efforts of the engineers and every new innovation they threw at it, within six short months production tailed off to no more than an embarrassing trickle.
And then almost overnight, it fell as dry as a mummy’s armpit, quickly doing an about turn to become a well in reverse - sucking in money at one end while throwing out nothing more substantial than tension headaches, stomach ulcers and falling share prices at the other.
Those who knew about these things put their heads together and decided it would be more cost effective to shut the whole operation down completely and move production to another more profitable field.
Bore holes were flooded with cement and sealed, wellheads were capped and made safe, and the drilling equipment withdrawn and dismantled.
Anything that wasn’t nailed down, welded to, or an integral part of the structure was packed up and shipped off, lock, stock and tungsten carbide bit. Up went the metaphorical ‘For Sale with Vacant Possession’ sign, and Bravo waited in the cold and the wet and the fog for someone to save her, and spare her the most likely end to her short career - to be ignominiously towed back to the rig graveyard, to be picked over, picked apart and selectively dissected, for her choicest parts to be carefully carved out and sold for so much scrap to be recycled into something more useful, and for the valueless remnants to be sent to the bottom and left to rot.
Longdrift allowed another year for a reasonable offer to come forward. In the meantime, Bravo could not just be left to fall apart. A minimal amount of periodic safeguarding still had to be carried out to maintain what little value it managed to hang on to.
Every new spot of rust, fresh crop of barnacles, and coating of guano ate not only into the structure itself, but its final valuation, and it would not be worth the bedrock it stood on if it should happen to collapse to the seabed or be blown to smithereens for simple lack of maintenance.
And this was where Eddie Capstan and his little team came in. They were supposed to spend the 99 days of their assignment surveying the structure from derrick tip to sea bed, taking samples and photographs, cleaning off rust and bird muck. They were also expected to grab a brush and give the place a touch up paint job wherever it needed it, generally sprucing the place up. What an estate agent might refer to as improving Bravo’s ‘kerb appeal’.
Eddie would file periodic status reports on their progress, and Longdrift, after holding long and interesting meetings around shiny tables with doughnuts and coffee, would decide what to do next.
With only nine pairs of hands it was proving to be hard work, both tedious and dangerous in equal measure, but they were all well trained in their fields and had a decent mix for best efficiency - brains and brawn, specialism and non-specific, female delicacy and downright physical brutality.
They had every tool, device and hi-tech toy at their disposal to make the job as safe as possible, but were not so complacent as to rely on these alone. Some low tech grunt stuff would be kept in reserve, because no matter how sophisticated an operation, Sod’s law dictated that if they didn’t, a case would always arise when there would be no substitute for brute force and ignorance – a guy like Lonny Dick fitted that role to perfection.
All they had to do was get the job done, get back to shore, draw their vastly inflated financial incentive and go their separate ways.
They were doing okay, until yesterday, when it turned into a scene of tragedy and Eddie knew without a shadow of doubt that those back in their comfy onshore offices would be cooking up ways to ensure he would be the one to get all the blame.
He was a man set adrift in shark infested waters in a leaking dinghy made of meat.
The crew sat, or slouched, around the lounge under a heavy blanket of sullen silence, broken only by the clunk of the wall clock marking out the passing seconds as each them contemplated their own mortality.
Brewer stared at the ceiling, McDougal picked at his nails, McAllister sat with his chin cupped in his hands, staring at the blank black rectangle of the dead TV. Reynolds flicked through a magazine and Cameron cradled a mug, studying its contents.
Eddie returned from the galley, cup of coffee in hand, and under Reynolds/Euterich’s oddly cold and detached gaze joined Lydia where she stood apart from the rest, staring out of the picture window at the expanse of sea beyond, to where the grey of the sky mingled with the darker grey of an oncoming cloudbank out on the horizon.
“Have you done it?” she said.
He scrubbed at his brow. “Yeah.”
“What did they say?”
“Not a lot, but I can read between the lines. I’m in charge, it’s my fault.”
“Bollocks. If anyone is responsible it’s me,” she said. “I should have checked on him earlier. As soon as he reported sick he became my patient. I was responsible for his welfare from then on in, and I let him down.”
Eddie laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You weren’t to know he’d go wandering off.”
“I should have kept a closer eye on him. I should have made him stay in sickbay. I should have –” Pause. “If you’ll excuse me. I have to file a report too.”
She walked out from under his hand, and away, and right at that moment Eddie wished he too could be anywhere in the world but in that room.
He felt the walls begin to close in on him, a kind of creeping claustrophobia, and he turned back to the window and the openness beyond.
Ideally it should be west facing, a vantage point from which he could watch the sun drop to the horizon at the end of the day to kiss the sea goodnight, before sinking slowly out of sight, leaving behind high clouds tinged pink and purple and a once blue sky a violent fiery orange streaked with red. Shifting palette of golds, blues and mauves, would slowly morph into the darkest blue black scattered with shards of light, those oh so clichéd diamonds on velvet.
For a hardened company man with oil under his fingernails and petroleum in his veins, Eddie Capstan had a deeply sentimental romantic nature; one could almost say it verged on the poetic.
For him, true splendour, true beauty, true poetry, lay in the simple pleasure of a sunset so unutterably magnificent it brought tears to his eyes.
Yet today even Eddie’s soft heart remained untouched. There was to be no sunset to mark the end of this day, only greyness and death; a day he really did wish had never dawned.
He picked at his dinner before retiring to his cabin to lay on his bunk, distracting his thoughts by reading until sleep came upon him; a shallow restless sleep which tormented him with the knowledge that tomorrow he would have to stand up in front of the remaining hands at the daily briefing and encourage them to muddle through their duties as best they could being one man short, because they still had a schedule to keep.
They would, of course, look back at him with faces full of contempt, as if he had just suggested they roast freshly killed babies on a spit, and he would justly deserve it.
Chapter 16
Euterich, safely installed in the reprehensible Reynolds’ body, had to work hard to keep up an act of being upset at Lonny’s loss.
He did not, however, have to work hard at carrying out the tasks allocated to his new host – locating, testing, making safe the nearly three miles of electrical cables running throughout the structure.
Although he had never done this type of work before, having good cause to have a healthy distrust of electricity once he dragged Reynolds’ appropriate memories to the fore and let them guide him, he found he was rather enjoying it and developed a new appreciation for the electrician’s craft.
At lunchtime the p
arty gathered in the galley to take a break from their labours, and eat. No one apart from himself appeared to have much of an appetite and there were plenty of reformed ham and plastic cheese sandwiches going spare.
Having polished off one round he returned to the servery for another, and seeing an opportunity to ingratiate himself, took the empty seat next to a still clearly distressed Lydia.
Most of her sandwich sat untouched on her plate and she was worrying the nearly cold tea in her mug with a spoon.
He offered a genial demonstration of Reynolds’ cock-eyed smile. “What happened to Lonny, it weren’t your fault Ms Ellis,” he said. “You shouldn’t be upset about it. Nobody is blaming you. Shit happens.”
To his surprise, despite the impoliteness of his statement, she returned the smile. “Thank you, Mr Reynolds. It’s very kind of you to say so.”
He felt a stirring in his chest, genuinely happy that she condescended to speak to him at all, and so cordially too.
She consented to them sitting together in companionable silence for a full ten minutes, him wolfing down his sandwiches, she picking hers apart, before she rose, refilled her cup from the teapot and left in a slipstream of delicate vanilla fragrance, citing her need to return to work.
His greedy eyes followed her, appreciating the way she carried herself, neat and erect, a slight swing to her hips, her steps light and dainty, until she passed through the doors and out of sight. Even when bowed by responsibility and enveloped in near shapeless overalls, the female form was a thing of beauty to behold.
Alone at the table Euterich chewed on his tasteless food as he thought back to the one time he had toyed with integrating with a female, to satisfy a burning curiosity, for the experience.
He had been on a trip to London, one of the most populous cities in Europe at the time, and he thought it would be easy pickings. Not so.
Women of his class, educated and refined with cultured intelligent minds, were plentiful enough.
Unfortunately for him, they were cloistered by overprotective males, making access to them all but impossible.
Offshore Page 9