Offshore (18 page)

It had
been a long time since Eddie had had any meaningful sex with anyone
other than his own right hand, and this, with Lydia, out of the
blue, against every regulation in the book, fulfilling and
satisfying for both of them, more than made up for the
shortfall.

Numb
with pleasure Eddie fell back against the pillows, lathered in
sweat, panting like a runner, his head spinning, his cock and balls
still tingling from the orgasm.

Lydia
lay down on him, her head resting on his chest. He kissed her damp
forehead, tasting salt from the fine film of perspiration, enjoying
the weight of her slender body against him.

He
stroked the silken length of her hair, released from its regulation
swinging pony tail to fall in chestnut waves over her back and
shoulders, as she ran her hand over his stomach and the pairs of
parallel silver scars which crossed it, a grid drawn out for some
macabre game of tic tac toe.

He tried
not to flinch at the tender connection. Although the scars were
healed, both inside and out, reliving the memory of how he got them
caused physical pain, psychosomatic probably, yet real
nonetheless.

Soft
fingertips traced the scars, then the pressure of warm lips against
them. “Tell me about these,” she said.

“
I’d rather not.”

She
kissed them again. “Okay.”

Was that
it? Given up? Didn’t she care? Or was she just being considerate of
his feelings.

Ach, why the hell not tell her. What harm could it do? It
won’t change the facts. It won’t make them go away. Might even make
me feel better.

He drew
in a deep breath. “I was stabbed,” he said matter-of-factly. “A
really pissed off guy with a really long knife tried to fillet me
like a fish.”

Lydia
drew herself up on her elbows to look into his face, her expression
grave. “Hell’s teeth, where was this? Some hellhole
abroad?”

“
Not quite. A little too close to home for comfort.” Pause.
“Aberdeen dock, fifty yards from the Mermaid Bar. Saturday, 21
August, 2008, 11.45 p.m give or take a minute or two. It was a warm
night with a full moon. I’ll always remember that moon, big and
bright, because I got a really good view of it while I lay on my
back, bleeding out into the gutter.”

“
What happened?”

Eddie
felt a tremor start in his leg. This was going to hurt. He cleared
his throat.

“
The guy was full of the swally, completely off his heid
stocious,” he said. “He said he didn’t like the way I looked at
him. I told him to sod off and leave me to my pint and I thought he
had, but when I left he followed me outside, spoiling for a fight.
There was a bit of a stooshie, some pushing and shoving, and then
all of a sudden he had this great big fuck-off knife in his hand
and … he … um–”

The
words jammed. He cleared his throat again. “... he stuck it in me,
deep. Sliced me wide open. I was lucky I didn’t lose my tripes all
over the quayside.”

There
he’d said it, and at the recollection a shudder ran through him.
Feeling it, Lydia held him closer, and he found he wanted to
continue.

“
I lost a lot of blood, and, I’m told, I died on the
operating table for a few minutes,” he said. “I don’t remember much
about that bit, or the week I spent unconscious in intensive care
afterwards. Don’t much want to remember the six months I spent in
hospital recovering either.”

She
continued to look him in the eyes, hers filled with care and
compassion, and then she bent and kissed the scars again. “Poor
baby.”

No one
had ever called him that before. He found he rather liked it. He
also found the fear and pain had diminished a little.

Euterich
heard the pair in the corridor outside, heard them go into her
room, heard them talking.

He
cursed his oversensitive hearing for picking up every grunt, groan
and sigh of their lovemaking, and be damned his highly developed
sense of smell as it tormented him with the sweet and sour scents
of sweat and semen.

The
pictures in his head tortured him - the pair laying their hands on
each other, feeling, tasting, images of Capstan with his tongue in
her pussy, her with Capstan’s dick in her mouth, both experiencing
the pulsating undulation of pure pleasure, the explosion of mutual
orgasm and the spine tingling delight of post coitus.

He
screwed up his face in a dark scowl and pressed his eyes closed,
squeezing out hot tears of yearning, craving her with physical
pain.

Fucking Capstan, taking what was
his
!

He felt
the fire of hate surge through him, coursing through his veins,
scorching his brain, enhancing and corrupting his already burning
jealousy to a state almost incandescent in its
intensity.

He
rammed his knuckles into his mouth, biting down on them to stifle a
cry of anguish.

Without
release the storm turned in on itself, and without mercy snapped
what little rationality he still possessed.

Chapter 20

The
weather forecast said to expect two relatively fine days in a row,
days to take advantage of and get some outside work done. Jock
McAllister and his helper of the day, Lawrence Brewer, were already
busy.

McAllister’s voice came through Brewer’s headset.
“Steady!”

McAllister had charge of this operation and right now his
word was law, and not even God himself could override his
authority.

Brewer’s thumb hovered over the red ‘stop’ button on the
handheld control, ready to bring the operation to a halt at a split
second’s notice if the voice instructed. The reason for his
diligence - nestled in its personal tubular cradle, itself held by
a sturdy gantry swung out at a right angle from the lower deck, a
bright blue and yellow remotely operated vehicle (ROV) about to be
deployed to
survey the platform’s four supporting legs and the seabed
on which they stood for degradation or damage, and to take samples
of the surrounding water and sand to check for contamination by
leakage or degeneration.

The ROV and its cradle
began to sway slightly on its support
cable as a rogue gust of wind caught it and turned it
around.

“
Wait...”
The air fell still again.
“Okay, bring her
down. Easy with it
.”

Brewer’s
thumb rested against the ‘down’ button, lowering the equipment at a
limpet’s pace ever downward, until it broke the water’s surface and
sank beneath it.

“
Touchdown! That’s great, Prof. Hold it there. I’m coming
up.”

Brewer’s
thumb switched from the green ‘down’ button to the red ‘stop’, and
the winding machinery clunked to a halt. Now he would wait for
McAllister to climb up from his lower level observation post to
join him.

Standing
at the safety rail, looking down the hundred plus feet into the
swelling waves of the North Sea, Brewer had time to remember back
to the last time he felt this keyed up, when he had last worn the
all enveloping coveralls, a hard hat with his name painted on and a
pair of steel toed boots so heavy they made him walk like
Frankenstein’s monster.

Had it
really been eight years? So long since he last felt any real sense
of anticipation of the work to come, of accomplishment at its
completion, of the sheer bone numbing exhaustion that came at the
end of a hard day’s graft?

He
turned his face to the breeze and wiped a hand over his brow to
smear away a sheen of perspiration; a nervous, excited, well earned
sweat pushed out by a pounding heart and a rush of
adrenaline.

“
And Longdrift thought it might be a hardship for me to be
out here,” he said. “How wrong they were. Look at what I’ve been
missing. I’ve been too long behind a desk and now, for a few short
months, I’m free of the office politics, get to hang out with the
guys, play about with some pretty nifty technology, as well as snap
the odd photo and get in a spot of fishing, and in return all I
have to do is keep my head down and do the jobs I’m assigned, make
a few observational notes of the crew’s psychological state along
the way, and then collect a big fat pay packet and a spot of leave
for my trouble. In reality, Longdrift old fruit, the joke’s on you
because I am laughing up my sleeve.”

A
herring gull perched on the rail a few feet away took no notice of
Brewer talking to himself, and continued its preening.

With the
ROV out of sight below the waterline, McAllister returned, scaring
off the gull now lined up in the viewer of Brewer’s
camera.

“
Good job Prof, I’ll take her now.”

“
Be my guest,” said Brewer, and stood back to allow
McAllister access to the controls.

Under
McAllister’s careful control the cable continued to play out,
taking with it the dual control cables. Power went down one, fibre
optic pictures came back up the other.

With the
device safely submerged, the holding clamps securing it to its
cradle were remotely disengaged.

Further
manoeuvring via its four separate directional thrusters would
require a skilled hand to manipulate a different set of controls,
and they were housed in the shelter of a nearby red
Portakabin.

Inside,
surrounded by empty packing crates, McAllister took his seat at the
workstation, manipulated a few switches, and three television
screens flickered into life.

“
Mind if I watch?” said Brewer, hovering close and peering
over McAllister’s shoulder.

“
You not got anything else to do?”

“
Not until we bring it back up.”

McAllister said, “Okay then, pull up a pew. So long as you
don’t want to chatter and don’t expect a running commentary. I have
to concentrate.”

“
Understood.” Brewer chose one of the sturdy plastic boxes
to use as a rudimentary seat and made himself
comfortable.

“
Would you mind if I take a picture or two?” he said,
removing the lens cap from his camera.

McAllister gave him a sideways look. “What for?”

“
They’ve given me this nice smart piece of kit to document
our adventure. Be a shame not to use it.”

McAllister grunted and turned his attention to the screens.
“Knock yourself out.”

Brewer
took the second seat, fascinated by McAllister’s dexterity. It was
like watching someone play a video game on three separate monitors
at once.

One
displayed status information from the ROV - depth from the surface,
height from the sea bed, degrees of direction faced and degree of
up or down tilt from the artificial horizon, together with speed of
movement, forwards and backwards.

The two
others showed grainy images of a bubbling, swirling morass of grey
greens, filtering beams of ethereal sunlight.

Long
brown strands of kelp wafted lazily in the current, stroking
against the camera’s lens. Down deeper - less light, less detail. A
flare bleached out the images momentarily, settled again, and the
pictures became clearer.

“
What happened then?” asked Brewer.

“
I put the lights on,” explained McAllister, not taking his
eyes off the screen. He pressed another button and a black box set
atop the middle screen whirred.

“
What’s that?”

“
Video. Got to make a record.”

McAllister nudged the joystick to the left, twitching his
head to match, as if he had become one with the
equipment.

Brewer’s
own attention shifted between the images on the screen and the
picture of absolute concentration on McAllister’s face.

He stole
a crafty snap with his camera. McAllister did not notice, too busy
tracking activity on the screens, his hands moving independently
over dials, switches, buttons and joystick.

At times
his tongue poked out between his lips and occasionally he would hum
in his throat and move the joystick a shade, changing the camera’s
position for a better view, eyes peeled for any sign of damage,
deformation or deterioration in the platform’s supporting column.
Totally engrossed.

“
Everything looks okay,” said McAllister after nearly thirty
minutes of concentrated silence. “Just one more place to look, a
couple of samples to take from the sand at the bottom and we’ll
call it a day. Tomorrow we’ll start on the anchors and
cables.”

He
teased the joystick and the images shifted.

“
Hey, a fish,” said Brewer. “A cod I believe. Big one too.
Good job I brought my rod. Might be worth a dip.”

“
Gonna need a whole shedload of chips to go with that,”
McAllister chuckled, his mood lightened now that the initial
pressure on him had eased.

“
How far down are you now?” asked Brewer, taking advantage
of his companion’s new found verbosity.

“
About a hundred and fifty feet, give or take. She should
hit sea bed in a few minutes.”