Offshore

by Lucy Pepperdine

  Everyone looked at each other, and then back to Eddie, shaking their heads.

  “No’ seen him all day,” said McDougal. “No’ that I’d particularly want tae.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’ll swing for him, I swear I will,” muttered Eddie. “Nothing but a pain in my arse any day of the week.”

  He pressed the talk button on his radio and called for Reynolds. No reply. Again. Silence.

  “Bloody hell!”

  Lydia took her turn at throwing her darts, missing the board with two, scoring a treble five with her third.

  “That’s me out,” she said, retrieving the darts and handing them back to McDougal. “Looks like you win … again. I’ll go and give Lawrence a hand until Reynolds get here,” she said to Eddie. “But I’m not doing the dishes. I’ve had my turn this week already.”

  When she had gone, McDougal burst into derogatory sniggering. “Couldn’t hit a barn door side on that one,” he said. “Pity we weren’t playing for money. I’d have cleaned her out.”

  “What were you playing for?” asked Eddie.

  “Laundry,” said Cameron. “She lost. Six men’s skiddy undercrackers, filthy stinking socks that can walk by themselves, and everyone’s sweaty overalls. That’s her day sewn up tomorrow. I hope she’s got a nose peg and rubber gloves. She’s going to need ‘em.”

  More laughter.

  Bastards.

  Chapter 26

  It took half an hour of steady burning in the enclosed space to build up enough heat to destabilise the acetylene in the tank.

  The resulting explosion created a perfect ball of fire which lit up Bravo like a second sun as it carried the roof of the welding hut over two hundred feet skyward, along with myriad other pieces of shrapnel to be rained down onto rig and sea, roof and deck, when gravity once more took control.

  Simultaneous waves of pressure and sound assaulted the window of the games room, making it bow and shimmer, and the sonic boom had all hands first ducking for cover, then clamouring for the source of the blast.

  A secondary explosion, the tank of oxygen obliterating itself, hurled a chunk of metal against the window with enough force to punch a hole in the outer pane and crack the inner.

  Cameron clamped his hands on Lydia’s shoulders and yanked her away from it, before putting himself protectively between her and any more danger.

  “Fucking hell! FIRE!” cried Shaw, spying the pall of black smoke snaking up from behind the monstrous mud pump on the far side of the deck. As if a switch had been flicked, he took charge and rattled out his instructions.

  “Cam, Spanner, Jock, go get your gear on. I’ll get Mr Capstan. Miss Ellis, grab the doc and make your way to the safe point. Stay there until I or the boss tells you otherwise. GO!”

  The boom jolted Eddie to his feet and out of his cabin, to be almost knocked back inside again by the designated fire crew racing to tackle the blaze.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Just coming to get you, boss,” said Shaw, grabbing his sleeve and urging him along. “Fire! In the welding hut!”

  Eddie followed hot on Shaw’s heels, taking the stairs two at a time down to the Fire Control booth where McAllister, McDougal and Cameron, were already fitting their fireproof boots and aluminium coated fire fighting suits, pulling up silver leggings, shrugging the braces over their shoulders, and pressing the Velcro strips on their jackets closed.

  Shaw checked the air tanks of the self contained breathing apparatus as the men fitted their full face masks, tightening the head straps to make them airtight. Lung demand valves in place, fresh air flowed. On went hoods, gauntlets and helmets.

  Eddie, acting as deployment officer, took the BA control board from the wall. He checked the information on each man’s tank sentinel before taking the ID tally, filling in the information and fitting it into a slot on the board, making special note of the time. Each had thirty minutes of air and he would allow them not a minute more.

  Essentials complete, he sent the team on their way.

  The walls of the roofless hut were peppered with shrapnel holes and the door hung out of kilter on its top hinge. Copious black smoke and tongues of orange and yellow flame poured from every aperture.

  The silver clad trio fought the blaze with everything they learned from their industry training courses, hammering it into submission with high power water jets and dousing sprays. Eventually clouds of steam replaced smoke, until that too dispersed to reveal the scale of destruction.

  The roof and the upper part of the walls of the hut were gone, blasted to oblivion. Nothing more substantial than the doorway, the lower three feet of wall and the bolts fastening them to the deck remained. Inside were only pieces of twisted metal and a pile of sodden black ash. The fire-fighters continued to damp down until they were satisfied every ember had been extinguished.

  With less than five minutes of air left they removed their breathing apparatus, made up their equipment and stood down.

  Eddie released the sweating and exhausted men to change into their regular clothes and take some rest, before advising Lydia and Brewer they could now safely return to the lounge.

  Then he and Shaw went through the regulation post operational procedures.

  They checked the equipment and clothing for damage before stowing it in lockers, and while Shaw cleaned the breathing apparatus masks and fitted fresh tanks ready for next time, Eddie made all the notes necessary to complete an incident report.

  It was full dark when he and Shaw donned hard hats and purple nitrile gloves, and under the harsh glare of deck lights and mobile arcs, began the investigation.

  “Smell that?” said Eddie.

  Shaw took a deep inhalation. “Acetylene?”

  “Yep. And?”

  “Paraffin, and …” Another sniff. “… trace of meths?”

  “Three out of three.”

  Using additional light from their torches, they carefully picked their way further into the wrecked welding hut to dig around in the ashes and search out the seat of the fire.

  “Something here,” called Shaw, and got down for a closer look. “Oh, holy shit.” He got up again. “I think you’d better see this, skip.”

  Eddie made his way over to where Shaw stood.

  “What have you found?”

  “This.” Shaw trained his torch beam on the lump at his feet. “It’s Daz isn’t it?”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

  “Who else could it be?”

  The body lay on its side, curled like a comma, knees bent, both arms contracted in a typical pugilistic attitude as the muscles beneath coagulated and shortened with the intense heat, blackened skin shrunk so tight against the underlying structures that it had split and cracked and flaked away, exposing bones and teeth beneath.

  The clothing had been burned off, no hair remained, and the eyes, those once sharp cold grey eyes full of indolence and mischief, were no more than black pits lined with globs of gelatinous poached egg white, their substance boiled away.

  Shaw got down again. “Look here,” he said, indicating the body’s wrists with a coloured finger.

  Clearly visible in the film of carbonised skin were the slits deliberately cut by Euterich, opened by the heat into wide grinning gaps.

  “Are they what I think they are?”

  Eddie shook his head. “Can’t think of anything else they could be, can you?”

  Shaw stared at him, then frowned. “Nah. It’s got to be something else. Has to be.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can’t believe he would … do that. Not to himself … not Daz. He’s not the type.”

  “And what type, exactly, would that be Matt? How well do any of us know what goes on in somebody else’s head?”

  Shaw had no answer, only another question.

  “So if he did … that … who set the fire?”

  “He must have. Probably wanted to make sure, one way or the
other.”

  Eddie got to his feet and cleared his throat, desperate to get the taste of vaporised body fat and hydrocarbons out of this mouth. Shaw was still staring down at the body, mesmerised.

  “You okay, Matt?”

  Silence.

  “Matt?”

  Shaw turned frightened eyes to his boss.

  “Yeah,” he said, unconvincingly.

  Give him something to do, before he starts thinking too much.

  “You up to doing something for me?”

  “Yeah, sure. What do you want?”

  “I need you to go find the prof and ask him if you can borrow his camera. We need it to take pictures, for the record; for the cops and the coroner. To make it official, you know?”

  “Yes boss.”

  “And Matt?”

  “Yes boss?”

  “Probably best not to tell him what we want it for, eh?”

  “You know what he’s like. He’s gonna want to know all the ins and outs, and he’ll know straight off if I’m lying? You know, like Mum vision?”

  “Then improvise. Tell him you want to photograph the moon or something. When we’ve done, we’ll take a photo of the moon, and you haven’t lied. Okay?”

  A weak smile. “Yes boss.”

  Shaw left to fetch the camera, leaving Eddie alone with the baked corpse.

  Not knowing what else to do, he turned his thoughts to what he had read in crime books and seen on television.

  What would the police investigators do at a scene like this?

  They would certainly take photos of the body and the surrounding area, and when Matt got back with the camera, he would have that covered.

  Next step, confirm identity. Impossible by sight alone; the body was too badly damaged, any fingerprints, distinguishing scars, marks or tattoos, all eradicated. This was one of those cases where identification would rely on dental records or DNA. They wouldn’t take his word for it.

  His musings were interrupted by Shaw’s return.

  “Got the camera,” Shaw said. “Unfortunately, I’ve got Dr Brewer too.”

  He cocked his head toward the doorway, where Brewer stood with his back to the room, head bowed, eyes closed, frowning away the image they had accidentally captured.

  “I didn’t tell him what I wanted it for, like you said. He asked, like I said he would, so I improvised, like you told me to, and he insisted on coming with it, to supervise. Says it’s expensive gear and he’ll be held responsible if we break it. I couldn’t really stop him.”

  “Christ!” Eddie took off his hard hat and scratched his head. “Make a start will you, Matt. I’ll have a word.”

  “Yes boss.”

  Eddie went to stand by Brewer. He did not invite the man to enter the shack. He could tell from the expression on his face he had seen enough already.

  “I’m sorry you had to see,” he said.

  Brewer shuffled his feet. “So am I. Who is it? I’m going to hazard a guess at Mr Reynolds.”

  “Unless we have a stowaway on board, there’s no-one else it can be.”

  “Oh, dearie me.” Pause. “Do you want me to tell the rest of the crew? I’m getting used to delivering bad news.”

  Eddie sighed wearily. “No. I’ll do it. You go and … erm–”

  “Put the kettle on?”

  “Aye. We’ll be through here in a few minutes and a cup of tea might soften the blow a little. Thanks for the loan of the camera. We’ll take care of it.”

  Behind them came the distinctive whirring and flashing of the camera in action, filling the shack and surrounding air with instantaneous lightning as time and again it captured the scene with an uncompromising eye.

  “I’ll let you get on with it then,” said Brewer, and left.

  Eddie returned to Shaw’s side.

  “I think I’ve got everything,” Shaw said. “At least from this angle…”

  Eddie nodded, understanding. Their task was about to get grimmer. Now they needed to turn the body over, to photograph it from an alternative position.

  As gently as they could, because any sudden movement was likely to snap it in half, they eased the fragile charcoaled body from the floor and turned it onto its back.

  “What the hell–!”

  “Jesus!”

  The whole of the front of the body gaped open, exposing blackened innards, liquefied, fused, cooked.

  “What made him split open like that? He looks like he’s exploded,” said Shaw.

  The memory of his own slicing shifted Eddie’s stomach two steps to the left and flooded his mouth with warm saliva.

  “Gas in the gut,” he said. “Expands in the heat, finds its own way out.”

  “Yeah? Urgh.”

  Eddie had seen enough. “Take your pictures Matt, then we’ll cover him up and–”

  What was the correct procedure in a situation like this? He had no idea. If there was going to be an enquiry, someone would need to see the body, so they should leave it in situ. But how long was that going to take? It could be days, weeks, and he couldn’t just put a tarp over it and leave it there. The gulls would rip it apart. To add to his problems, it was starting to rain.

  “And what boss?” prompted Shaw.

  “Er .. .we’ll put him in the pump room,” said Eddie. “Hello, what’s this?”

  He picked up a warped blackened rectangle with a metal tag attached and held it up to the light of his torch beam. Very faintly visible beneath the coating of soot and melted plastic he could just make out the remains of a Longdrift identity tag. He rubbed it with his purple thumb to reveal three letters, L, D, S.

  Desmond ReynoLDS.

  No doubt about it now.

  They wrapped the body in a bright yellow tarpaulin, folding the ends over like an envelope, before tying it up securely around the neck and ankles with a length of thin rope. Between them they carried it to the pump room below the helideck.

  “Do you think it was alright to move him,” said Shaw, as Eddie fitted a padlock to the steel door. “I’ve seen stuff on the telly. They always say not to touch anything.”

  “I know,” said Eddie. “But we already moved him to take photos, and we couldn’t leave him where he was with the roof gone, exposed to the elements. The gulls and the rats would have found their way in soon enough and started work.”

  He gave the lock a final tug, ensuring its security.

  “Reynolds might have been a total shitehound in life,” he said. “But even he deserves a little more dignity in death than being an all you can eat barbecue for vermin. Come on, we’ve done all we can for now.”

  He put the padlock key in his pocket, and the two of them walked back in silence through the rain to the habitat block.

  Chapter 27

  Eddie had been standing in the corridor outside the door to the lounge for the past two minutes, not only steeling himself for the ordeal ahead, but fighting off the first signs of an encroaching panic attack.

  Several times he glanced back to the door of his cabin, tempted to duck inside his little room and hide, to not have to stand up in front of everyone and deliver the bad news – another crew member was dead in the most horrific of circumstances, and have to witness the expressions of anguish and upset, and horror on their faces as they took it in.

  There might even be tears, although he doubted it.

  An idea. Maybe Shaw could do it. He was his protégé after all, his appointed second in command. It would be a good learning experience for him.

  No. As Team Leader the ultimate responsibility fell on him, and wriggling out of dealing with unpleasantness by palming it off on a junior smacked of the worst kind of cowardice.

  A small whiny voice piped up in his head and he recognised it as his own, at five years old, on his first day at primary school.

  “I don’t want to be here. I want to go home. I want to play in my blanket fort and do my colouring. Take me home, Mummy.”

  He felt tightness in his throat, dove inside his cabin, yanked o
pen his drawer and pulled out a brand new pair of startlingly white flannel socks. He ripped off the paper band and separated them.

  Off came his trainers and the socks he put on at lunchtime, his second pair that day, and on went the new ones. He waggled his toes inside the stark white cotton cases. Cool and comfortable and soothing; substitute comfort blankets on his feet.

  He refitted his trainers, took a moment to rub deep circles at his temples with his fingertips, and another to rearrange the pens in his pocket, before taking several deep cleansing breaths and leaving the cabin to stride into the lounge, his air of confidence nothing more than a transparent facade.

  Eddie took up a position at the front of the room where he could see and be seen and clapped his hands together, partly to attract the crew’s attention, partly to stop them from shaking.

  “Folks! Can I have your attention please?”

  The room fell silent.

  “As you are already aware, there has been a serious accident on board today … a fire in the welding hut,” he said. “I want to thank you guys, Cam, Jock, Craig, for a sterling job in putting it out quickly and efficiently, but it is my sad duty to confirm there has been a casualty. Mr Reynolds…” He paused, not for effect, but to swallow down the rising lump in his throat “…Mr Reynolds is dead.”

  A low murmur circulated the room.

  The prospect of a tortuous death by fire, burned by flames, suffocated by smoke and toxic gases, trapped in a place with no escape, was every platform worker’s worst nightmare.

  “Do you know what happened?” asked Brewer.

  “Not yet, although I do have a theory,” said Eddie. “It will need a proper and thorough investigation, so when I’m done here, I’ll be contacting Longdrift in the morning and putting the ball firmly into their court. What they decide to do is up to them. We shall have to wait and see, but I guarantee it won’t be pleasant for any of us. Until then…” He shrugged. “There’s nothing else for us to do but carry on as best we can. Okay?”

  Silent nods all round. As they filed toward the galley for more tea, Eddie held Euterich/McAllister back.

  “Jock? Can I have a word please? I just want to ask a couple of questions.”