The Devil's Whelp. Vin Hammond Jackson
it might placate their restless spirits; in truth, however, he had a terrible feeling his faith was misplaced and that a crucifix and a string of garlic might lend greater protection.
Clem Berry rarely entertained such notions. A down-to-earth professional, he preferred VU meters and LCD read-outs to emotional supposition. Not that he wouldn't grant credence to certain unexplained phenomena - UFOs were a fact of life, despite what official USAF reports would have everyone believe - but he reckoned his job would be a whole lot harder to do from inside a straight-jacket, so he kept his mind on his work and anything else was none of his business. He was at the controls of his precious stack when the Inspector tottered up. He heard the footsteps and turned, his usual benevolent smile spreading across his round Texan face. "Nice night for it, Inspector. How yo'all doin'?"
Caffrey breathed a heavy sigh of relief: the great looming monster was a friend! "Fine, thank you," he lied. "May I ask what that is?" He pointed at the console. "It appears to be extremely technical."
Clem's arms spread. It looked as though he was about to embrace a prodigal son. Instead, he placed two enormous hands lovingly on his equipment. "This, my friend, is your life. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but ol' Clem's baby here's the middle man. It controls the stack, Inspector. That's the blowout preventer which sits down there on that little ol' hole and keeps the lid on it."
Ernest was nodding, although he was still none the wiser. "What exactly does it do, er - Clem, was it?"
"Clem Berry, Inspector." He swung and presented a large hand for Caffrey to take. "Sub-Sea engineer. It monitors the pressure build-up in the hole and I can release it under strict control from up here on deck. You see, I just check these little ol'....." Clem's head seemed to shoot forward on his massive shoulders as he spotted something. "What the heck? Aw, shit! Another Goddamn leak. Sonofabitch!"
His hands moved about the console with restrained urgency. Ernest stood back, not just to give the huge man room to work, but because Clem's talk of blowouts and pressure build-ups made him somewhat nervous of a piece of machinery that might explode in his face at any moment. He was uncertain whether it would, or even could, but he hadn't reached fifty by being apathetic regarding things about which he knew absolutely nothing.
Clem appeared to have finished his adjustments. He made a brief visual check of the console, then bustled over to the TV monitor. He panned the camera for a few moments. "Hell, what's that?" He backed it up. Whatever he thought he'd seen had gone. He continued until he discovered a problem not so fleeting. "Aw no! Jesus Christ, not again!"
The sub-sea engineer's hand drifted up to rub the back of his neck while he pondered the situation. Then he shook his head, sighed, and turned to face Caffrey. "Would you consider doing me a favour, Inspector?"
"If I can."
"I need to have the toolpusher here. Do you think you could find him for me?"
"Del Presswood? Yes, I suppose I could, but wouldn't it be quicker to call him? I've noticed you have an intercom system on board."
"Don't think that'd be such a wise decision, Inspector." He stepped aside. "Just take a look."
Caffrey moved closer. The screen was only small and it had a tendency to flicker. On top of that, he wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to be looking for and began by regarding the picture much the same way as he would an abstract painting. After a moment or two, the patchwork of vague, ambiguous images started to make more sense and he suddenly realised that he was viewing equipment beneath the sea, possibly on the ocean floor itself, or at least near it. Then he recognised a shape, or thought he did. It seemed out of context when all he was expecting to see was an assembly of mechanical features. This object moved - slowly, gracefully, perhaps influenced by an underwater current. When it finally came to rest, the shape was much more clearly defined. "It's a man," decided Ernest. "Is there a diver down?"
"Nope. And if there was, he just might find the need to breathe once in a while. Cain't see no air lines, can you?"
Caffrey looked again. The big American was right - there was no sign of breathing apparatus of any kind. "Then it must be the missing man, the friend of the murder victim."
"You might just be right, Inspector. Don't know of anyone else gone AWOL and it sure as hell don't look like no mermaid."
Caffrey stood back and checked the deck both ways. He nodded at the TV monitor. "You'd better tune to another channel before you get an audience. I'll go and find Del. We'll need a diver to bring up the body, of course. Who do I see to arrange that?"
Clem was already in the process of panning the camera to a less dramatic scene. He spoke over his shoulder: "Just get the toolpusher: he'll fix it." The sigh Clem now produced was more emphatic than his first as he slowly expelled the remaining air from his lungs. "Jack ain't gonna like this. He ain't gonna like it one little bit."
4
One of the newcomers on board who didn't mind the night was the police photographer. Even though he had to admit that the rig had taken on a rather eerie quality once the sun had gone down, it was, nevertheless, exactly what he wanted. At least, it would be if he could capture it on film.
The Inspector had left him with a list of subjects to photograph. Mostly it was routine - boring, boring, boring. When you'd seen one corpse, you'd seen them all. His friends used to rib him about the female ones. It was peculiar, but he didn't think of them as women any more, not once they were dead. They just became angles and apertures. It wasn't even art, merely visual documentation.
Since first arriving on board Olympian, he'd managed to get most of the basic stuff out of the way. Now he was up to the interesting part and was taking shots of those locations which may have featured in the crime or could possibly be pertinent to the investigation at a later date. Here there was room for artistic licence when he didn't just have to 'get it all in', but could consider composition and the effectiveness of playing around with depth of field.
Not all of these shots would appear in the files, of course, but he wasn't being exactly underhand about it either. They would be available to anyone who happened to visit Peter's apartment, or the particular gallery which had agreed to exhibit them.
He had just finished with the room they used for communicating with the divers and was now on his way to the moon pool. He'd been there earlier to photograph the hand-line attached to the steps and the peculiar deposits of evil-smelling slime, but that had been in daylight. Not that much of it had reached below decks, but there had been enough to destroy the intense atmosphere he was certain would exist at night. If not, he could always create his own by falling back on his professional expertise and the right filter.
He used up the last exposures in his number two camera on the rig floor. This area, he decided as he left, did have something going for it and would be worthy of a return visit. He found the ladder which he had been told would take him down to the moon pool and paused to change the film.
~o~o~o~o~
By the time he'd reached the moon pool area, Darryl Westlake had expended most of his courage. For this reason and because he was certain that his nervousness showed, he avoided the light, clinging instead to the shadows that bordered the catwalk around the pool, just in case someone saw him. He was jumping at every sound and his eyes hurt from the staring. The point he had been trying to prove to himself by being there had become so obscure that he could remember it no longer. All he knew was that he had to walk, without rushing, right around the pool, stopping occasionally. Each time he stopped, he forced himself to look around casually and be very, very cool as if it was the most natural thing. There was no danger, nothing to be afraid of, no reason why he shouldn't be there - it was his right.
It was also bullshit! The raised hairs on his neck confirmed it, as did the tension in his muscles. If he needed convincing further, he only had to ask himself why he kept wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans, or why they were sweating at all? He had never realised how long it took to skirt the entire catwalk. Then again, he couldn't remember ever doing it before - there had been no point,