Читать книгу The Devil's Whelp - Vin Hammond Jackson - Страница 28

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.