Offshore (27 page)

Bright eyes, pupils as wide as tunnel openings, gabbling like
a Tommy gun, fidgety. And that smell? Faint, but familiarly
pungent. Jesus! Nine thirty on a Sunday morning, and he’s
stoned.

“
Mr Capstan?”

Eddie
realised he’d been staring. “Sorry, aye, I’ll just have some toast
if it’s no trouble.”

“
No trouble at all. Help yourself to coffee. It’s fresh
made. Perk you right up.”

“
If you don’t mind me saying, you seem pretty perky
yourself.”

“
Me? Yeah, well, a bright and sunny Sunday morning will do
that, eh? I’ll bring your toast over when it’s done.” Whistling
tunelessly, Euterich strode off to tend to Eddie’s
request.

As he
made for a table, coffee mug in hand, Eddie glanced toward the open
door to the lounge and the picture window beyond. Outside it was
blowing a gale, battering sleet and rain so hard against the glass
it turned it opaque. A bright and sunny Sunday morning? On what
planet?

He was
going to have to have another quiet word with Mr
McAllister.

Eddie
took his coffee and toast back to his cabin, leaving a hyperactive
McAllister scurrying about the galley with a spray gun, letting
loose a cloud of cleaning fluid and scrubbing down the already
gleaming steel worktops with all the frenetic busyness of the
Duracell bunny on a mission.

He took
his time eating his meagre breakfast, showered, dressed, and read
through what he had written overnight. By the time he had
procrastinated as long as he could, it was lunchtime. McAllister
was nowhere to be seen, and if Eddie could employ x-ray vision and
see through the cabin walls, he would have found his ROV operator
face down, spark out on his bunk, his batteries gone
flat.

Eddie’s
lunch consisted of a mug of tea and two digestive
biscuits.

Nerves
had taken away his appetite. When he looked at the clock it was
half past one. He’d fannied about long enough and had to make the
call. He slouched his way to the control room, dropped into the
chair and picked up the satellite phone handset with a trembling
hand.

“
Get a grip man,” he admonished himself. “You’re tired.
Overworked. Overwrought. Stressed to the point of a stroke. You’re
fretting over nothing. Make the call. Get this over with.” He
punched the number for Longdrift Headquarters, 250 miles away on a
modern industrial estate on the outskirts of Aberdeen, where even
on a Sunday, because the oil business was a 24/7, 365 days a year
operation, there would be heating, hot coffee, Danish pastries,
lights that worked and no dead bodies to clutter up their working
day.

If only
he’d checked the calendar first.

“
Longdrift. Mike Chalmers speaking. What’s your
pleasure?”

Mike
Chalmers, the standby operator?

They
only use him when the place is closed. Not today.
Please!

“
Mike, this is Eddie Capstan out on Falcon
Bravo–”

“
Aye aye loon. Long time, no hear from. Fit deein’ oot theer
in the wild blue yonder?”

“
Tell you later. I need to speak to Mr Edgecombe. It’s a
matter of utmost urgency.”

“
Not in.”

“
Mr Bellwood?”

“
Nope.”

“
Whitman then.”

“
Sorry.”

“
For Christ’s sake, who
is
there?”

“
Naeb’dy. Did ye ferget it’s a long weekend here? Theer all
oot on the golf.”

Shite!

“
There must be somebody on call I can talk to today. It
can’t wait until Tuesday.”

Chalmers chuckled.
“Fit’s ma’er. Som’bdy else gone
walkaboot?”

Silence.

“
Oh Jesus, Eddie! Who?”

“
Daz Reynolds.”

Silence.

“
You know him?”

“
Aye.”

A longer
silence.

“
Hoad oan a mintie while I put ye through.”

The line
went silent. Eddie waited, tapping the desktop with a pencil. A
‘mintie’ stretched into a full five minutes.

“
Mr Capstan. Mr Chalmers tells me you have yet another
calamity on your hands.”

The cold
affected tones of Oliver Skeffington. Why, of all people,
him?

When it
came to the scraping of barrel bottoms, they didn’t get any lower
than Skeffington. Power hungry, with his sights set firmly on the
vast corner office on the top floor of Longdrift’s headquarters,
the man had all the stony presence of an Easter Island statue, with
none of the charisma. What he lacked in personality he made up for
with sheer back stabbing ambition.

“
Yes sir, I have,” said Eddie.

“
Better get on with it then.”

Eddie
relayed what he knew about Reynolds’ apparent suicide and the fire,
although he made no mention of his doubts and suspicion of murder.
Even to him it still sounded ludicrous.

Skeffington listened in complete silence.

“
You still there Mr Skeffington?”

“
I’m still here.”

“
So what’s the plan? Will you send out a chopper to pick up
the body? What about the polis? This is the second death in six
weeks. They’ll want to investigate this time for sure.”

Another drawn out pause.
“I will inform the relevant authorities
and take advice,”
said Skeffington, oozing indifference,
“... and either I, or
preferably someone … better informed, will get back to you and give
you your instructions.”

“
When?”

“
As soon as is practicable. As you are aware, it is a local
holiday here, businesses are closed, staff are on leave, services
are … limited.”

“
Bugger that! You don’t seem to understand, Mr Skeffington,
I have a dead body on my hands–”

“
Stick it in the freezer–”

“
What? I can’t–?”

“–
and in the meantime, carry on and get the job done as best
you can while you can. We’ve had some interest in Bravo and it
looks promising, so your time for getting her spick and span is
fast running out.”

“
As are my crew! There aren’t enough hands–”

“
You’ll manage. That is what we’re paying you for, isn’t it?
To manage?”

“
Aye, but–”

“
So rearrange your schedule to pick up the slack by giving
the hands who are left more work and less downtime.”

“
I can’t do that. They’re already working all God’s hours as
it is. They’re tired and scared … and it’s not safe. If I push them
harder, there’s going to be...”

Mutiny? More deaths? My neck on the block?

“
...Please, Mr Skeffington, send the chopper and get us off
here before someone else dies.”

“
Like I already said, I’ll take advice and get back to you
soonest, so leave your little problem with me and get back to work.
Okay? Good-bye, Mr Capstan.”

Silence.

“
Mr Skeffington –?”

Nothing.

“
SKEFFINGTON!” The line was dead.

Skeffington had gone, leaving Eddie once more with his
skelped arse hanging in the wind.

“
Sodding, fucking bastarding HELL!”

He
slammed the phone into its cradle, snatched up his mug and hurled
it. It sailed across the room, coffee trailing behind it like a
banner, to ping against the far wall, shattering into a dozen
pieces.

“
Rancid goat buggering tosspot!”

A swipe
of Eddie’s arm across his desk, and all his carefully arranged
paperwork took to the air, to flutter to the ground like so much
confetti.

“
Skeffington, eh?”

Eddie
turned, and through eyes misted with rage, saw Shaw hovering in the
doorway.

“
You know him?”

“
Only by reputation. I’ve heard he’s an utter bastard. A
buck passing hand washer. A brown noser of the lowest order with
one butt cheek already in the big chair.”

“
That’s him.”

“
That’s it then,” said Shaw. “If
Skeffington’s on the case, we’re shafted. Let me guess what he
said;
Sort it out yourself. It’s not my
problem
?”

“
More or less. He said he’d inform the authorities, take
‘advice’, and get back to me. Precisely when, he didn’t
specify.”

“
U-hu.” Shaw sniffed. “So what are you going to
do?”

Eddie
closed his eyes and let his neck roll. “Apart from wait? Honestly,
Matt, I haven’t got the first fucking clue.”

“
Call the authorities yourself. You’ve got the
phone.”

“
You mean bypass Longdrift altogether?”

“
Yeah. Why not?”

“
They won’t like it.”

Shaw
said, “So what? In all honesty boss, they can go screw themselves.
This is bigger than the company.”

Shaw was
right. This was nothing to do with the company any more. Still,
Eddie decided, he should give Skeffington the benefit of the doubt,
give him chance to do the right thing for once and get things
sorted. He would give him 24 hours and not one more. After
that…

Alone
with the mess of papers Eddie got to his knees, gathered them up,
and sorted them once more into their neatly ordered
piles.

Unfortunately, nobody told Oliver Skeffington he had a
deadline.

At his
rather splendid detached house in the Aberdeen suburb of Westhill,
he hung up the phone on Eddie Capstan out on Falcon Bravo, and
returned to his interrupted Sunday lunch with his friends and
family. His wife had made his favourite dessert, apple strudel with
vanilla custard, and he wasn’t going to let the hysterical
ramblings of a lower order employee with an inferiority complex
spoil it.

If a man
was dead, he wasn’t going to get any deader was he?

Eddie
Capstan’s inconvenient problem could wait until Longdrift opened up
for business again after the long weekend.

Chapter 30

The
oversized can of baked beans sat on the top shelf in the pantry,
where only a tall man could have put it. “Thanks a bunch Lonny,”
Lydia grumbled as she stretched herself on tiptoes, her fingertips
scratching at the label. “Come here you bugger.”

Another
pair of hands took hold of the can and lifted it down. “Let me get
that for you, Miss Ellis. It’s heavy. Wouldn’t want you dropping it
on your foot.”

She
smiled, “Thank you, Mr Cameron. You are a gentleman.”

A flush
of red showed in Cameron’s neck as he nestled the tin in the crook
of his arm. “Well … erm … you know … couldn’t let you struggle.”
Cough. “I’ll take it through for you.” He carried the tin to her
workspace in the galley and set it on the counter. “Shall I open it
for you?” he said.

Lydia
followed him into the kitchen.

She
liked Cameron. He had a ‘puppy dog’ quality about him that she
found appealing, always eager to please, minded his manners and
language in her presence, blushing and apologising if a curse
slipped out, and now blushing because she had complimented
him.

Crack that tough nut engineer’s shell and a real sweetie
would tumble out.
“No Mr Cameron, I think I can take it from here,” she
said.

“
Anything else I can do for you … to help, I
mean?”

“
Don’t you have something of your own to take care
of?”

“
Only the sausages,” he said. “They’re in the oven, nice and
cosy.” He peered into the cooker to assess the food’s progress.
“Won’t need to touch ‘em for at least another twenty
minutes.”

“
Potatoes?”

“
Boiled. Just need reheating and mashing.”

“
Gravy?”

“
Last minute. Don’t want it going lumpy.”

“
Dessert?”

“
Ice cream.”

“
Cutlery and condiments?”

“
Sorted.”

Lydia
opened the can, poured the contents into a stock pan, and set it on
the hob to heat through.

“
Looks like we’re pretty well organised,” she said, wiping
bean juice from her hands onto a paper towel. “In fact, I think we
might very well be ahead of time.”

“
Yeah. We make a pretty good team.”

Awkward
silence.

“
So what do you want to do to pass the time?” said Cameron.
“We can watch a DVD?”

Lydia
leaned her back against the worktop. “I’d rather chat.”

“
What about?”

“
You. This is the first time we’ve spent any real time
together since we got here, and I’d really like to get to know a
little bit more about you.”

“
Why?”