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“Why not?”

  “Because they have never been used for their intended purpose and have been utilised as extra storage. The truth, Miss Ellis, is that you have the dubious honour of being the first and only female ever to set foot on this platform.”

  The group of men broke out into spontaneous mocking applause and whistling.

  Lydia had more to say, “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “You can get yer kit off right here,” brayed Reynolds. “We don’t mind, do we boys?”

  “What, and have you creaming your pants at the sight of my lacy whites? I don’t think so.”

  Reynolds grabbed his crotch suggestively and thrust his hips. “Oh be still my raging boner.”

  “More like Needledick the Bugfucker.” Lydia waggled her little finger in obvious mockery of his manhood. “Seen more meat on a butcher’s pencil.”

  Reynolds face flushed scarlet and contorted into a scowl fit to curdle milk. He opened his twisted mouth to issue some retort, but not before Eddie stepped between them, calling a halt to their insult trading before it got out of control.

  “HOY! That’s enough!”

  He turned his back on the furious Reynolds to address Lydia.

  “Miss Ellis, I’m sorry. In a perfect world we would have the facilities for you, but unfortunately we don’t, and I feel terrible to have to suggest this but, on this occasion would you mind…using a lavatory cubicle to change?”

  The look on her face said it all; yes she bloody well would mind and why didn’t he suggest she lick the toilet bowl clean for good measure. Her hard eyed disgust prompted him to apologise further, despite the situation being out of his control, and offer a compromise.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s the best I can offer at the moment. If you’ll give me some time I’ll work on rigging up something more suitable. Until then you have the choice, here with us or out there on your tod, although for security’s sake I would prefer we all stayed together.”

  She puckered her mouth and jutted her chin. “Looks like I’ll be staying here then.”

  “Thank you.” Her hand went up again. “One more thing?”

  Patience, Eddie.

  “Yes Miss Ellis.”

  “Are you going to do something about getting some heat on in here sometime soon? You tough guys might not notice the cold, but my nipples have gone as tight as Scammell wheel nuts in protest.”

  “I certainly have noticed, Miss Ellis, and you’re right, they are … it is.” A faux pas realised far too late. “I didn’t mean … I wasn’t referring to your nipples obviously, of course, because that would imply I looked … I didn’t, because it would be rude … to look … to stare … although I’m not saying they are not very nice nipp–”

  Over her fixed unwavering glare Lydia’s censuring eyebrows disappeared under her hat. “I think it’s time you stopped digging now, Mr Capstan,” she said. “This hole is deep enough, don’t you think?”

  Eddie clamped his lips closed and he swore furiously inside his head as he tried to banish from his mind the crude imagery of a pair of rock hard nipples standing proud of her breasts like chapel hat pegs. At least he tried. Others hadn’t. Reynolds grinned openly.

  McDougal swallowed down a snigger. Brewer harrumphed to clear a whole throatful of frogs. Lonny, bless him, simply looked on, bemused.

  Eddie plastered on a smile of well meaning imbecility, hoping it might dampen her ire a little, and apologised for the third time in as many minutes.

  “I’m very sorry Miss Ellis. As soon as I’ve changed I’ll be on my way to get the generators fired up and the lights and heating on. Okay?”

  She returned the smile, without the warmth, turned on her heel and marched into the lavatories, slamming the door behind her so hard it rattled in its frame.

  Eddie’s shoulders slumped. Great. Just sodding great. Way to go, Eddie.

  “Touchy sort in’t she?” said Lonny Dick, shattering the ensuing silence. “Are they all like that?”

  Eddie looked up at the big man. “I’m afraid so, Lonny. I’m afraid so.”

  Within ten minutes they were all sitting around in their every day clothes - hands thrust deep into pockets of jeans in various stages of disrepair, necks pulled down protectively into sweatshirts, hoodies and thick cable knit sweaters, like turtles retreating into their shells, shoulders hunched, faces sour, breathing out their own personal fog banks. Nobody had risked changing into their work-a-day overalls, because stripping off even one layer of clothing risked inviting frostbite.

  Lydia Ellis still had on her beanie hat and the sourest expression of all as she wiped at her startlingly scarlet nose with a crumpled tissue. She had hit the nail squarely on the head with her observation.

  It was Baltic in there - flesh sprouted goosebumps, breath puffed out in visible clouds and testicles retreated into abdomens, seeking somewhere warm to hide before they turned blue and dropped off.

  “Right, let’s get this place properly warmed and lit,” said Eddie, the tip of his own nose feeling decidedly icy, his fingers displaying interesting shades of purple and orange despite a set of woollen fingerless gloves making it difficult to zip up his sickly yellow-green fluorescent jacket. “Mr Shaw, would you put on your protective gear and come with me please?”

  Shaw looked up from fiddling with his shoelaces. “Who me, boss?”

  Eddie nodded. “Aye. I’ve got a job for you.”

  Mister Shaw’s chest puffed slightly at being selected for special recognition, despite not knowing why. “Yes boss.”

  Eddie reached into his bag again and extracted a plastic pack from which he took several sheets of paper, on the front face of each were sketched floor plans of the platform’s work areas and habitat; on the rear, several paragraphs of close type.

  “The rest of you stay here,” he said, handing the top sheet to Reynolds. “We won’t be long, so here’s a little light reading to keep you entertained while we’re away.”

  Reynolds screwed up his face. “What’s this?”

  A sheet went to Cameron. “Read it and see.”

  “It’s too cold to read. What’s it say?”

  For God’s sake.

  And one to McDougal. “In short, there’s a map to help you find your way about, and some health and safety bumph, most important of which is – there will be absolutely NO smoking anywhere on board, except in the Smoke Shack. Is that clear?”

  An order, not a question, one aimed directly at Reynolds, the one he considered most likely to flout this particular edict for the sheer hell of seeing if he could get away with it.

  “Be warned, this rule in particular will be most rigourously enforced,” he added. He passed around the rest of the sheets, saving the last for Lydia Ellis. “Don’t wander off while we’re away,” he said. “Ready to go, Mr Shaw?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Got your gas monitor? There might be pockets of build up the detectors haven’t picked up on.”

  From his bag Shaw fished out a square silver coloured gadget with a digital readout, and fiddled with it. It peeped like a drunken budgie and he attached it to the breast pocket of his jacket. “Ready, sir.”

  “Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir,” mimicked Reynolds in a whiny nasal tone, receiving a hard glare in return.

  “Everyone else put yours on, too,” said Eddie. “Mr Shaw?” He extended his arm to the exit indicating their intention to leave the rest of them to their own devices.

  Eddie and Shaw trod their way to the generator plant room, following the line of power cables snaking along the ceiling.

  “What a dump,” said Shaw, voicing Eddie’s own opinion. “How the hell did it get into this state so quickly?”

  “Any place left to the mercy of the elements can fall into wrack and ruin soon enough. My Grandma’s house for instance, left empty for two years after she died, and then condemned because of rampant damp and rot.” Eddie shivered. “Three months in this hole, though. Jesus Christ. What were we thinking?”

&nbs
p; Chapter 3

  Shaw’s bootfall echoed Eddie’s as he walked in his leader’s footprints, like Good King Wenceslaus’s page, and he chunnered on about this and that, but Eddie wasn’t really listening. He was trying to concentrate on where they were going.

  As they took yet another wrong turning in the unfamiliar labyrinth Eddie wondered what Shaw had done to end up here and not be drawing his wages out in some tropical swamp, checking his boots for poisonous spiders, feeding peanuts to a pet parrot and knobbing the local lovelies. Was he, like Reynolds, McDougal too probably, being punished for some indiscretion or other, not quite serious enough to get sacked outright, but troublesome enough for the company to want to teach them a lesson?

  Or had he, like himself, been bribed into spending the whole of the next fourteen weeks out on this forbidding citadel at sea by the lure of filthy lucre. He settled on the latter, because mercenary buggers all, himself included, not one of them had turned up his or her nose at double pay plus a handsome cash bonus, all tax free, followed by a month’s leave on completion, all reasonable expenses paid. A pretty natty package when all said and done, and nigh on impossible to resist.

  They made another wrong turn and had to double back on themselves before, more by good luck than good management, they came to the room housing the massive generators - literally the powerhouse of the whole place.

  Going at full pelt they could produce enough electricity to light ten thousand homes. However, to preserve their restricted fuel - an irony considering where they were, they would be running at only a fraction of that, and heat and light would be at a minimum.

  With hard-hat now in place and foam padded defenders cradling his ears, Eddie entered the control booth to check the power grid status boards. As expected all the bulbs were grey and dead, indicating zero activity.

  Shaw, also attired in fluorescent yellow green, scuffed yellow hard-hat and red ear defenders over a black balaclava, located the dials measuring the levels in the two diesel fuel tanks.

  Number one tank, full; number two … only a quarter full. That couldn’t be right. He tapped the glass and the indicator swung sharply to the right - three quarters full. Better.

  “Can I ask you something, Mr Capstan?” he said, words carried on a fine white cloud.

  “Sure,” said Eddie. “What’s on your mind?”

  “We all know you’re in charge, but have you had any time to think about … about who’s going to be your second?”

  Eddie did not look up from his work. “My second?”

  “Yeah. You’ve gotta have a second, you know, in case you get sick or have an accident or something. Got anyone in mind?”

  “Actually I have. You ready for a manual start? I think we’ll get away with just one genny’s output for the time being.”

  As Shaw pumped the priming handle to fill the fuel reservoir, Eddie grasped the large red handle of the main generator with both hands.

  “She’s ready,” said Shaw.

  “Three … two … one …”

  Eddie heaved the handle upwards and Shaw depressed the green battery powered ‘start’ button. Nothing.

  “Did you flood the reservoir, Dip?”

  “Nope. She’s just cold. Try again.”

  Again they tried. Still nothing.

  “Third time’s a charm … if the battery hasn’t gone flat.”

  Shaw mashed the button. The generator turned over, coughed like an asthmatic chain smoker, and whirred laboriously, almost giving up the ghost before spluttering reluctantly into life.

  It grumbled and groused as it built up speed, eventually reaching the required rate of revolutions per minute, and settled into a monotonous hum. Indicator gauges swung wildly before settling at somewhere around the centre mark.

  After a brief pause, the lights in the room came on, starting off a dirty yellow, but as energy flowed and normalised, they brightened, reaching full intensity within less than a minute.

  “Let there be light,” Eddie declared, locking his handle into place.

  In the plant control booth a complicated pattern of red dots now glowed on the board, each connected to the other by an intricate spider-web of silver lines, making a rough outline of the entire structure, and each one indicating a sector of the platform where no power was available.

  Eddie selected several buttons and switches, flicked and clicked and pressed, changing the widespread pattern of red LEDs to a more compact one in green, directing power to where lighting, air conditioning, and heating would be needed most. It would get the essential desalinators and water filters into production too.

  “So …” urged Shaw, a keen and hopeful edge to his query.

  “So what?”

  “Your second? Can you tell us who it’s going to be, so I can get my knee pads on in case I have to get down and start brown nosing?”

  “I have given it some consideration,” said Eddie.

  “And?”

  “You’d have to be a contortionist.”

  “Eh?”

  “To brown nose yourself. I was going to give it to Niall Shanks ‘til the silly bugger went down with the lurgy, so …” A pregnant pause. “The job’s yours if you want it.”

  Shaw pushed his hard hat back off his brow. “Me?”

  “That’s why you were asking, wasn’t it? Testing the water?”

  “No!” Cough. “Well … sort of … okay, yeah. I did sorta hope.”

  Eddie laughed. “So do you think you can work with me, follow my instructions, even when you don’t agree with them?”

  “Yeah, sure, as long as you don’t make me look like a div.”

  “I’ll try not to, although they do say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  “Sir?”

  “As the others already think I’m a bit of a wanker, it might be construed as guilt by association.”

  “Ah gotcha.” A nonchalant shrug. “I’ll try and cope with it… sir.”

  “Good man. And you can drop the sir. Guv or boss, or chief, will do.”

  Shaw’s face broke into a wide grin. “Yes sir. . shit! Sorry, sir … fuck! Sorry, boss … guv … ah, bugger it.”

  When a grinning Eddie turned his back to adjust the heating thermostat, Shaw mouthed a silent Yeeessssss, and punched the air with glee.

  On their way back to the locker room to rejoin the waiting crew, Shaw made his first request of his new boss. “Can I ask a favour, guv?”

  “Sure, Dip. What is it?”

  “That.”

  Eddie stopped in his step. “What?”

  “The nickname.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s … childish, and it really pisses me off. Skinny I might be, I can’t help that, but I’m no Rodney Trotter. I’m not an idiot. Would you mind?” He looked almost apologetic for asking.

  Eddie clapped a friendly hand on his bony shoulder. “No, Matt, I don’t mind at all. And I know you are certainly not stupid. If I thought for one minute you weren’t the sharpest chisel in the entire woodshed, I would never have asked you to be my exec. Okay?”

  Shaw nodded, relieved and thankful. “Okay. Thanks chief.”

  In a dark corner of the second sub-level workshop, ears more sensitive than a dog’s picked up the distinctive rapid whap whap of helicopter rotors.

  Faint at first but getting closer, louder.

  Directly above now, settling to a constant drone, sending waves of vibrations through the wall. Touch down?

  Wait. Listen. A resurgence of power – take off. Rotor noise fading until no longer audible, followed by the telltale rhythm of footsteps.

  Silence. And then a new sound, one the inhabitant of the dark and dingy workshop noted with interest. Not the helicopter this time; something different - rhythmic, powerful; a regular mechanical thrumming.

  They wouldn’t fire up the generators unless they intended to stay, would they?

  Chapter 4

  Eddie opened the locker-room door. As he stepped through he was
immediately struck in the face by something sharp and white. He flinched and batted the paper dart to the floor. Several others were strewn about the room.

  Caught in the act playing immature games, the group stood about in embarrassed silence.

  Without a word Eddie gathered up the paper playthings, straightened them out, and put them back into his bag.

  Waste of time and effort. Ungrateful bastards.

  “Shall we go?” he said stiffly, and picked up the bag.

  The ten minute trek to the accommodation block aroused yet more grouses and complaints from the little gaggle of workers as they trudged down narrow but now brightly lit corridors, their shoes ringing on the metal floor plates.

  They climbed several flights of steps and passed through more fireproof bulkhead doors, closing them securely behind them.

  Eddie wasn’t complaining. At least Falcon Bravo had an integrated habitat block, unlike on his previous assignment when several times a day he had to traverse a shifting, open, house of horrors type walkway nearly a hundred metres long and fifteen metres above a swelling unsympathetic sea to reach the separate block, grasping onto the handrail for dear life with his heart always in his mouth as he expected every wave breaking over him to be the one which swept him to his doom.

  ABSOLUTELY NO WORK CLOTHES OR BOOTS BEYOND THIS POINT!

  The home-made laminated sign blue tacked to the wooden slab of one of the double swing doors indicated in no uncertain terms the strict demarcation between work and leisure areas.

  Boots maybe. Overalls, no. Eddie yanked it off. They could get stuffed. Neither he nor the crew were going to freeze their knackers off twice a day just to keep the carpets clean.

  They passed through the doors and into the accommodation block itself.

  At first glance the area appeared clean and bright; magnolia painted with carpet tiles on the floor and wall lamps illuminating black and white photographs of the platform, taken from various dramatic angles in all kinds of weathers. A rather impressive artificial parlour palm sat in a terracotta pot, giving the impression they were in the foyer of a three star city hotel, but there the illusion ended.

  The air around them sat disagreeably cool with an underlying musty odour.