"Do you want to look?"
"I might."
"Would you care to ask first?"
Mildenberger sneered. "Not particularly."
"Then piss off!"
The sergeant stiffened. "You've just made a serious mistake, Mister Toolpusher."
"Two, actually," corrected Del. "The first was calling you bozos in at all, and the second I am about to rectify." He pushed past and headed towards the door to the office. He paused before leaving, but did not turn. "Touch that doorknob," he warned Mildenberger, "And, cop or no cop, you'll be tying your bootlaces with what's left of your teeth!"
He stormed out of the bedroom and went straight to Caffrey. "I'm a civilised man, Inspector. Compared to me, some of the jokers on this rig are little more than Neanderthal."
Caffrey dabbed at his nose with the handkerchief, trusting this would mask the smirk of amusement that was battling to cross his face. "What's your point, Del?"
Presswood heard the scuff of Mildenberger's shoes as the sergeant returned to the office. That was good: the ignorant sonofabitch needed to hear this. "It's quite simple, Inspector - it's tough on the rigs. It takes a special kind of man to work out here. They may not be the brightest people in the world, but they do respond if you show them respect. Treat them with contempt and they'll send all of you back to the big city with your balls in a knot round your necks and your arses so full of four-letter words, you'll be screaming obscenities for the rest of your naturals. Do yourself a favour. Tread softly on this one."
He continued across to the door. Les was just returning. Presswood pushed him aside. "And put Fritz back on his chain," he called over his shoulder, "At least until he's house-trained."
3
Night comes quickly at sea. One minute there is a gigantic, shimmering orb lowering its magnificence down to the far horizon, melting as it touches, bleeding a last farewell into dancing waters; the next, there is merely a fading glow and the darkness closes in rapidly. The grandeur, however, was lost on Olympian. Someone merely noticed the phenomenon as an inconvenience and threw a switch. The lights came on. Work continued, disrupted only by technical problems which were a way of life, and the police investigation which was not.
It was getting underway slowly by design. The Inspector had decided to take Presswood's warning to heart, not because he bowed to threats - veiled, exaggerated, or otherwise - but simply because it was the intelligent thing to do. As a consequence, he was treading softly and had instructed his team to do likewise. He was confident that Lyons and Perry would comply; Mildenberger, however, did not operate well under restraint and Ernest had no intention of tying him down too securely. Not yet, anyway. This was one of those cases where he felt that the level and nature of the violence with which the crime had been perpetrated, warranted the use of an equal force similarly devoid of pity and human compassion. For this reason, he had left Mildenberger in charge of interviews. It would, he thought, be interesting to see what Dieter's bulldozing tactics threw up.
Interesting wasn't the word that Darryl Westlake would have used. "A fucking liberty," was the way he described his interview with the cops. "I told him - I just found the poor bastard, that's all. So, he says: 'How did you know where to look?' and I says, I wasn't looking, not for him. I didn't even know he'd gone missing. I was just walking down by the moon pool, I says, and I noticed the hand-line tied to the ladder, so I pulls it up. 'Why?' he says. Why do you think? I says. To check the fuckin' bait, of course! That was when he really started giving me a hard time."
He left his mates in the dining room to gorge themselves on food which he couldn't face. Presumably, they would then wash it down with a lively discussion of his unfortunate encounter with the law. That was up to them.
Darryl wasn't a great one for solitude - his idea of a quiet night was some cartons of beer, a couple of 'R' rated videos and half a dozen rowdy mates to share them with. On this occasion, however, he preferred his own company. That way he wouldn't have to answer a load of dumb questions.
All the same, there was one question that did keep popping up - what had he been doing down by the moon pool? He couldn't, for the life of him, remember. That bastard-of-a-sergeant had latched onto it and kept throwing it back. Each time he did, Darryl got more confused and could recall even less. One thing was for sure - if he ever went down there again, it wouldn't be on his own. Not that he was afraid, or anything. He just wanted witnesses in case another body turned up.
Having satisfied himself that it was a legal technicality and not fear that kept him from re-visiting the scene of someone else's crime, he ought to have felt better. Instead, he just felt worse which was stupid. What did he have to be afraid of? He could take care of himself. As for the law, you were supposed to be innocent until proved guilty, and all he'd ever done was buy the odd bottle of scotch and a car radio that fell off the back of a truck, so why shouldn't he go down to the moon pool if he wanted?
Darryl had been sauntering, pausing occasionally, wandering the ship with no particular destination in mind. Suddenly, he had this compulsion to go below if for no other reason than to prove the point that he wasn't scared, not of dead bodies, or murderers, certainly not of jumped-up little Hitlers who thought that a cop's ID gave them the right to push people like him around. No, Sir!
He picked up his pace for a while, but the closer he came to his Nemesis, the less confidence he managed to retain. He began to view his surroundings in a different light. The rig was no longer a work-place to be taken for granted. Mechanical structures appeared suddenly as dark, angular monsters silhouetted against the harsh work lights. Shadows, ignored last evening were now areas of mystery to be approached with caution and maybe avoided completely.
~o~o~o~o~
In another part of the ship, Inspector Caffrey was having similar thoughts. With Mildenberger holding the rough end of the stick, he was free to pursue his own line of enquiry, which he did on trembling legs with less than his usual enthusiasm. By sundown he had disproved Bill Rose's assurance that he'd be 'right as ninepence in a while', and was feeling sicker than ever. It had a lot to do with an all-pervading smell which he thought to be a combination of ozone and diesel fumes, but that wasn't the main reason for his uneasiness. What disturbed him the most was that he had been unable to discover a good enough excuse to call up the helicopter which would take them off this noisy, obnoxious, floating death-trap. They had no option but to stay over.
This night was a strange one, he thought, unlike any other that he could recall. He and Margaret had gone out to the beach - when was that, last evening, or before? - to look at the stars. Away from the brightness of town the glittering pin-points had appeared so clear and serene. The night sky had been full of them. Now, when he looked up he was unable to see past the artificial halo created around Olympian by a network of glaring floodlights.
Without a sky or anything natural to relate to, his mind drifted to the unnatural considerations of his immediate environment. Illuminated by so many suns, the area directly beneath was as bright as day; but beyond, the shadows increased and intensified. Within them lay not only the dangers of an over-active imagination, but those of a physical nature which caused heads to bump and shins to bark on protrusions all-too clear in daylight.
People had changed too. There were as many now as there had been earlier because the Oil Show had to go on, but the grimy, unshaven workers who swarmed over the ship like busy ants during the day shift seemed to gravitate towards the brightest parts of the rig once night fell. The few he did encounter away from the lights seemed little more than dark spectres stalking the decks. Some walked together. Their whispered jokes had become more crude, macabre even, their laughter cruel and sinister, but because they were otherwise occupied, they tended to ignore him, and he reciprocated. It was the lone individuals of whom he was most wary. They were, he fancied, more stealthy, more ghostly and just seemed to appear out of nowhere. Were they friends, foes, or the Grim Reaper himself? Ernest was unsure, so he tried to wear a smile with which to greet these shadowy figures when they approached, hoping